STAVELOT, Belgium – Max Verstappen earned the pole for the Belgian Grand Prix during a soggy qualifying round Saturday at Circuit de Spa-Francorchamps, but the story was the man who will share the front row with him.
Williams pilot George Russell nearly scored a massive upset pole with a late lap in qualifying, only for Verstappen to steal it away at the last second. Verstappen topped the charts with a best time of 1:59.765, which edged Russell’s fast lap of 2:00.086 in the rain.
“I am very happy with pole position here at a home Grand Prix, but it was not easy out there,” Verstappen said. “It was very hard to nail a lap, I was just trying to find the right lines at the right times and judging how fast to go into corners after such a long red flag was tricky. It was so important to get the tyres up to temperature because that could give you a few seconds of lap time around a long track like this. Tomorrow we don’t know if it will be a dry or wet start, I think if it’s wet I don’t mind if I start first because at least I should have clear vision but I just hope that we have a good and clean start. I also hope that Lando is feeling okay and that he doesn’t have any serious injuries because that didn’t look like a good impact at all, he’s a good friend of mine so I hope he can race tomorrow.”
Russell’s late run earned him his second front row start and first since he drove in place of Lewis Hamilton last year in Bahrain. It’s the first front row for Williams since Monza in 2017.
Lewis Hamilton will start third for Mercedes, with McLaren’s Daniel Ricciardo and Aston Martin’s Sebastian Vettel qualifying fifth.
Q3 was stopped early when Lando Norris crashed up the hill to Raidillon, leading to a lengthy red flag. Norris was taken to a local hospital to be checked, but has since been cleared to drive in Sunday’s race.