The weather in Las Vegas was cool, and the "participants" were greeted by an early awakening all over the world, curious to know whether the advantage shown by Mercedes in the third free practice session could be converted into pole position.
The first fast laps of Q1 were for McLaren, then George Russell shone and took the lead. As in the tests, Scuderia Ferrari also showed strong form, but in the end the top three positions went to Mercedes and Max Verstappen. Among the retirements, as per tradition, we recorded Sergio Perez, Alexander Albon, Valtteri Bottas and the two Aston Martins.
Q2 played out similarly to the first heat, with Hamilton, Piastri and Verstappen in order, but, with a bit of exaggeration, pretty much anything could have happened. Mercedes' pole was coming together... Hamilton, Sainz, Russell was the order, and just as the session was about to end, it was necessary to end early due to a bad crash by Franco Collapinto. A red flag and a wait followed... Collapinto, along with Esteban Ocon, Kevin Magnussen, Guanyu Zhou and Liam Lawson, failed to qualify for Q3.
After the first laps of Q3, Russell, Sainz and Verstappen led the pack, which was no surprise at all. It was also no surprise that, at the end of the last attempts, George Russell took a clear pole position. However, Carlos Sainz's second place and Pierre Gasly's fantastic third place definitely fall into this category. In the end, qualifying for the Las Vegas Grand Prix turned out to be a really good event, let's hope this form carries over to tomorrow's race!
