They say if you want excitement on track, just add water. But sometimes just the threat of wet weather is enough.
Rain has been on the forecast all weekend, and having dampened the track before the start of qualifying, it was looming large on the radar again as the top-10 shootout got underway.
It forced teams and drivers to do their best to harmonise the radar, the conditions in the pit lane and their gut instincts to make a decision on how to approach the make-or-break first minutes of the Q3.
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One team got it sensationally right and another got it spectacularly wrong.
In a marvellous change of fortune, it was Haas that had the rub of the green, and Kevin Magnussen racked up his and the team’s first pole position in Formula 1.
And in a predictable continuation of fortune, Ferrari ended the day with its tail between its legs and yet another opportunity missed, the latest in a long line of botched chances.
The catch for both is that this is a sprint weekend. The 100-kilometre dash has tended to be seen effectively as the first stint of the grand prix and a chance for out-of-position cars to revert to the mean. It’s an opportunity for Charles Leclerc to climb the order and a risk for Magnussen to lose places.
But there’s still wet weather on the radar, and as qualifying so aptly showed, sometimes all it takes is a little bit of water.
THE ANATOMY OF A PERFECT POLE
The beauty of Haas’s sensational pole was its execution. This wasn’t just about an excellent lap in difficult conditions — though it undoubtedly was — but it was also about the team making the right call for the conditions before anyone else.
All 10 cars were presented with a difficult question at the start of Q3 with rain due imminently. Either they could either start the session on slicks and hope the track stayed dry enough to set one lap time, or they could head out on intermediate tyres and hope that they got the best of the wet conditions before the standing water became a problem.
Some teams were tempted to wait and see. Haas had no hesitation.
Magnussen was sent out on slicks first of anyone. He sat at the exit of pit lane waiting for the session to start, which meant he had the track at its driest. The rest of the field were only seconds behind him, but persistent light rain was enough for that to make the difference.
“It was not luck,” team boss Guenther Steiner told Sky Sports. “It was well deserved from the driver, from the team — being on the right tyres at the right time, Kevin putting a lap down when it was needed.
“You need to go out there. He was first out there. You can say, ‘Yeah, he had an advantage’, but a disadvantage [is] he had nobody to gauge with. He was on his own. He put a lap down, and it stuck.
“A credit to him, he was given the opportunity and he took it.
“When it rains soup, you need to have a spoon, and we had a spoon ready today!”
George Russell then sealed the deal by triggering a red flag on his second lap, which spoke to how much conditions had started deteriorating in a small amount of time. By the time the session resumed, the track was long past its best.
Right place, right time, right decision. Haas was the only team to get that combination correct on its 143rd race weekend.
“The whole team deserves it,” Steiner said
“We are trying hard, the whole team has been trying hard for seven years, and then circumstances let us pull this one off.
“We always work hard, we never give up, we keep on fighting, and you will always have naysayers. But welcome to our pole position, naysayers!”
MAGNUSSEN CAPS OFF COMEBACK SEASON
This has been some year for Kevin Magnussen.
The Dane wasn’t even a Formula 1 driver until halfway through pre-season testing, and his arrival rejuvenated the team after a difficult 2021.
The year hasn’t lived up to his fifth place in the first race in Bahrain, but it’s been a season characterised by high peaks.
What he lacks in consistency he makes up for in a tendency to get the most out of favourable circumstances, and Brazil was another such example.
“Thank you to (team owner) Gene Haas and Guenther and the whole team for this opportunity,” he said. “I got back this year after a year out and it’s just been an amazing journey.”
It’s fortunate too that Magnussen’s pole came in 2022, when the regulations were changed to recognise the fastest driver in qualifying on a sprint weekend as being the pole-getter rather than the winner of the sprint race.
There are positives and negatives to Magnussen’s first P1 start being in the sprint.
The downside is that he won’t have a chance tomorrow to lead a grand prix.
But the upside is that without strategy, it’ll be that little bit harder for the faster cars behind him to get past, and while Interlagos is one of the calendar’s better tracks for overtaking, Magnussen has never been shy about using robust moves in defence and on attack.
If he can hold the lead on the first lap, he’ll be putting the likes of Max Verstappen in a position to decide how much risk they’re willing to take for the sake of one extra point.
A podium? A win?
“Maximum attack. Let’s go for something funny.”
Don’t rule anything out.
FERRARI FUMBLES AGAIN
While it was pleasure for Ferrari customer Haas, it was pain for the Scuderia itself, with Leclerc’s gamble on intermediate tyres while everyone else committed to slicks condemning him to 10th on the sprint grid.
It wasn’t even the team’s first error of the day, having been caught completely unprepared earlier in the qualifying hour when Leclerc came into pit lane for a tyre change. The vision of Ferrari mechanics fumbling around with seemingly random sets of tyres was just another clip for the end-of-season highlights reel of mistakes.
Leclerc had checked off the gamble but apparently hadn’t been made aware that the team would split its strategies, with Sainz heading out on the popular slicks. He also didn’t know he’d be the only one gambling on the intermediate rubber.
While the forecast showed rain, the team would’ve been better to hedge its bets by responding to what the rest of the field was doing. It would’ve been less pressing to be out early on intermediates than it was to be out early on slicks, but even a late lap on softs would’ve surely put the Monegasque higher than 10th.
“We were expecting some rain which never came,” Leclerc said. “I will speak with the team and try and understand what we can do better in those conditions. But I’m extremely disappointed.
“We still have the car. But now we need to get on it and do everything good for the rest of the weekend.”
He even managed to get in the way of Sergio Perez as he lumbered around on the wrong tyre, which confined the Mexican to ninth behind Lewis Hamilton — meaning neither driver is likely to take an upper hand in the battle for second in the championship on Saturday.
While Sainz qualified higher, in fifth, he’ll be demoted five places on the grid on Sunday for an engine part change, dropping him into Leclerc’s vicinity, another blow.
While the Italian team can take some heart from the fact its car is closer to the leading pace this weekend, poor execution is costing it again, and considering it said it would be using these final dead-rubber rounds to try to improve its trackside operations, being the only team to make the wrong tyre decision with just one car wasn’t a good look.
SICK NORRIS SUPERB TO COUNTER ON-FORM ALPINE
McLaren looked like it would be limping into the penultimate round of its battle with Alpine for fourth in the standings upon arrival in Brazil, with Lando Norris struck down by a case of food poisoning serious enough that Nyck de Vries was prepared as his substitute.
The Briton came good on Friday, but only just, looking visibly still unwell getting into the car.
But he was rapid throughout the hour and seized upon the freneticism of Q3 to put himself fourth on the grid alongside George Russell, a remarkable turnaround.
“I really didn’t think I was going to be driving today,” he said. “We went out last, which maybe wasn’t a perfect decision at the end of the day, but we took away a lot of other risks in doing so and I still went P4 even with the wettest track, so I’m really happy.”
It’s not even the first time Norris has pulled such an against-the-odds result out of the bag. In Spain and Monaco he was suffering an acute case of tonsillitis but scored points in both, including fifth on the grid in Monte Carlo. It’s certainly an admirable level of stoicism.
And it was a potentially crucial result too. With Daniel Ricciardo starting a lowly 14th after a mistake at turn 1 on his final flying lap of Q2, Norris is the only McLaren car in a scoring position on Saturday.
Alpine’s Esteban Ocon and Fernando Alonso in sixth and seventh. If they finish where they start, both teams will be on track to score five points on Saturday, neutralising the battle for another day.
