Abu Dhabi GP Qualifying: Verstappen on pole, with a spectacular Leclerc on the front row!

With the last qualifying session of this never-ending 2023 season done, the verdict is one seen over and over again: pole position for Max Verstappen in his Red Bull RB19; alongside him Charles Leclerc's Ferrari SF-23. Although the second row is the prerogative of Oscar Piastri and George Russell, the driver who has the most to complain about at the qualifying result is Lando Norris, who in Q3 had pole within reach, had it not been for an oversteer in the third sector which was as spectacular as detrimental for his laptime: the Englishman from McLaren will therefore start in fifth position; following, here's the final classification:

Sensational eliminations for Sainz in Q1 and for Hamilton in Q2: the fight between Ferrari and Mercedes continues

The Yas Marina qualifying saw a couple of rather important twists in Q1 and Q2, where we had two unexpected eliminations: we are talking about Carlos Sainz (only in P16) and Lewis Hamilton (very close to the top ten, in P11).

Glenn Dunbar / Motorsport Images

The premature elimination of Carlos and his SF-23 was due, in my opinion, to the Spanish driver's lack of confidence with the track after the accident that occurred in FP2. Although during the night between Friday and Saturday the track marshals allowed work to be carried out to smooth out the bump which had caused the Ferrari driver's crash, we cannot fail to consider the importance that completing the free practice work plan has... With just a few laps under his belt, Sainz went into qualifying with many unknowns regarding the behaviour of the car and the tyres in qualifying trim, and in fact already in Q1 the combination of traffic and lack of confidence with the track was enough to relegate him to P16!

"This weekend the gaps between the cars are really close, we're all close together. So you have to do everything right to go to Q2 and then to Q3. We simply didn't do it, we left the pits very late for the last attempt at due to a problem with the front wing... Then I found all the traffic possible in the first two sectors. At that point I knew that the first two sectors would not be fast enough to progress into Q2; in the third sector, however, I managed to be fast, but not enough to do a real clean lap"

Carlos Sainz

Steve Etherington / Motorsport Images

At Mercedes, however, Hamilton's performance doesn't come - at least on the surface - with a reason to justify the gap from George Russell, who by doing better than his compatriot by 0.346 s in the middle qualifying portion, placed himself in fourth position. Lewis himself is unable to justify the gap paid by George: since the two are on par in terms of setup, it's plausible that the sharply falling temperatures between Q2 and Q3 made the 7-times World Champion's tyre warm-up not optimal, determining a lack of grip to best tackle the fast corners of the first sector.

"It was a challenging session for me, I had problems with the car setup all weekend, even though our cars are set up the same way. We need to understand what is on my side of the garage that is causing a lack of performance. George managed to get the most out of the car today, finishing in P4. We need to do a thorough analysis and do our best to move up tomorrow. The team deserves a good result for the last race of the season..."

Lewis Hamilton

"Before the weekend we would have accepted P4 in qualifying. But, after the performance in FP3, in which we were the fastest in every single lap, we only improved by six tenths in the afternoon... Considering that the track temperatures have dropped and that we had less fuel in the car, we didn't extract as much as we should have. It was a bit disappointing [...] I'm looking forward to the last race of the season, and even though Lewis had a poor session today difficult, I'm sure he'll come back tomorrow"

George Russell

These two performances below expectations from Hamilton and Sainz set the duel between their teams on substantially equal terms in view of the race: bear in mind that Mercedes' advantage over Ferrari in the Constructors' Classification is only 4 points, so for the team from Maranello it would be enough to replicate the starting positions to overtake the German rivals. More presumably, however, it will be difficult for Leclerc to maintain second place, while both Lewis and Carlos will have plenty of chances to recover...

Verstappen and Leclerc ahead of everyone, with the latter in an unexpected front row!

Returning to the top two of the day, Verstappen's is the 12th pole of the season for a driver who dominated less on Saturday than on Sunday (with his 18 victories out of 21 GPs raced so far).

Simon Galloway / Motorsport Images

"It wasn't easy to get pole, because we struggled all weekend. We definitely improved the car for qualifying and from the first lap we managed to put things together and push a lot harder [...] Last race for the RB19? I have no idea how we will fare in the race; it certainly was a special season, we had a lot of fun and we enjoyed it. We are very proud of the results achieved this year"

Max Verstappen

Of course, we had the opportunity to reiterate many times during the season how much the RB19 was a "Sunday" car, that is to say a racecar whose best assets were the consistency of performance on long runs (because of a proper symbiosis with tyres); however, it's still worth highlighting Leclerc's great performance today too, as he lapped just 0.139 s behind the World Champion.

Glenn Dunbar / Motorsport Images

Amid the penalties served during the season, Charles achieved 5 pole positions and 4 second places in qualifying, which means he was on the front row 9 times out of 22: not an exceptional track record considering that on the eve of 2023 they were talking about World Title as a goal, but ultimately amazing considering the single-seater that the team made available to the Monegasque this year.

"This P2 is kind of a miracle, I absolutely didn't expect it. We really struggled a lot in Q1 and Q2, not to mention FP3. This result still gives us hope for second place in the Constructors: the fight with the Mercedes is the only thing that interests me and motivates me at the moment, but if there's a chance to win like in Las Vegas, I will do everything to take it [...] McLaren and Red Bull are very strong, and they will also be in the race; I hope that Carlos also starts well and gets closer to me"

Charles Leclerc

Also Oscar Piastri and Yuki Tsunoda in the top 10, while Perez disappointed, once again victim of track limits

In third position, as mentioned at the beginning of this article, we find Oscar Piastri's McLaren MCL60, overall slower than his teammate Norris throughout the weekend, but "cleaner" than him. Precisely for this reason, it will be his the task of putting the first two under pressure in the first stint of the race: the Woking team has chosen to continue with its high downforce setup, so it's to be expected that the their low tyre degradation will be a strong asset over the 58 laps scheduled.

Jake Grant / Motorsport Images

"Difficult session, we're all extremely close this weekend. But the car is fast this weekend, and this is a nice positive twist compared to Las Vegas. I'm happy to be back in the top three positions [...] I made some mistakes also in Q1, while from Q2 I put things together and then in Q3 I went quite well. I have no idea what the race pace could be, but it will be like that for everyone!"

Oscar Piastri

Another great performance from Yuki Tsunoda, who achieved his best qualifying placing ever with sixth position. Having overcome the Q2 trap gave new hope to the Japanese, who in the last portion of the session managed to put four cars behind him: to tell the truth, however, one of them (Sergio Perez's Red Bull) would have been in front of him, had it not been for the cancellation of the Mexican driver's best lap due to track limits.

"Things were going very well, we had a very competitive Q1 and Q2, but unfortunately in the end we weren't able to put everything together in Q3, and we made the situation worse by infringing track limits. The podium will be the goal tomorrow, no one has much information on how they will behave in the race, so let's see: as I always say, anything can happen!"

Sergio Perez

But rules are rules, and this promotes Yuki to the third row, from which he will have the possibility - in my opinion - to build a race that will lead him to finish in the points...

Zak Mauger / Motorsport Images

A quick prediction for the last race of 2023!

We've therefore almost reached the end of this World Championship, and before the very last race (tomorrow at 2.00 pm CET) all that remains is to make a quick prediction: I think that the race winner will be Max Verstappen (who would have said it!), while the other two podium positions will see Lando Norris in P2 and Charles Leclerc in P3. I also expect that Russell will be able to fight for the podium, so - as mentioned - it will be important to see the final positions of Hamilton and Sainz to decide the second position in the Constructors' Championship.

See you tomorrow!

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