BUDAPEST, Hungary — Charles Leclerc surprised even himself in winning the pole for Sunday’s Hungarian Grand Prix during qualifying on Saturday at the Hungaroring.
Dramatic circumstances at the end of the qualifying session saw Leclerc pull a rabbit out of the hat to put his Ferrari ahead of McLaren teammates Oscar Piastri and Lando Norris.
After drops of rain in Q2, and with track conditions appearing to fall away, Leclerc produced a stunning time of 1 minute and 15.372 seconds on his final Q3 lap to overhaul point leader Piastri by a mere. 026 seconds.
“Today I don’t understand anything at Formula 1,” Leclerc said. “Honestly the whole qualifying has been extremely difficult – when I say extremely difficult it’s not exaggerating. It was super, super difficult.
“It was difficult for us to get to Q2, it was difficult for us to get to Q3. Q3 the conditions changed a little bit, everything became a lot trickier and I knew I just had to do a clean lap to target third. At the end, it’s pole position. I definitely did not expect that.”
Behind Piastri and Norris was Mercedes driver George Russell and veteran Fernando Alonso in an Aston Martin.
Gabriel Bortoleto was seventh for Sauber, with world champion Max Verstappen eighth for Red Bull.
