Max Verstappen wins British GP Sprint Qualifying to claim Pole ahead of Hamilton

Red Bull’s Max Verstappen claims pole position for 2021 British Grand Prix after winning first ever F1 Sprint ahead of Mercedes duo Lewis Hamilton and Valtteri Bottas.

Max Verstappen jumped pole man Lewis Hamilton at the start and never looked back in the 17 Lap Sprint race. The Dutch man will get three championship points along with Pole position for his win.

During drivers parade after Sprint race, MAX said, “I got off to a really good start and that was a great fight with Lewis early on. You could see we were pushing hard as there was lot of blistering on our tyres. I think tomorrow will be a very exciting race and we’re looking forward to it”

Lewis and Mercedes had more straight line speed than Red Bull to overtake Max but The Brit couldn’t challenge him and has to settle for P2 on the grid and two championship points .

The Brit thanked fans for giving him extra energy, “First of all, let me say thank you to the fans, their energy is amazing. I gave it everything today, I’m just sorry I couldn’t win it for them. Tomorrow we will fight again, but they [Red Bull] are just so strong”

Mercedes tried different strategy with Bottas by fitting him Red soft tyres than Yellow mediums. But The Fin failed to impress in any manner and comes home in P3 ahead of fast approaching Ferrari and Charles Leclerc in P4.

Bottas is very concerned about tyre wear in tomorrow’s race, “We tried to do something different at the start but it didn’t quite pay off for us. Today has shown us that tomorrow isn’t going to be easy for any of the drivers – anything can happen and that makes it exciting”

McLaren duo Lando Norris and Daniel Ricciardo will start the race from third row on the grid after qualifying P5 & P6 respectively.

The Biggest gainer of the Sprint race Fernando Alonso will start the race from P7 ahead of Sebastian Vettel in P8. The Spaniard gained 6 places in the first few corners of the Sprint race after jumping from P11 to P5.

Alpine team decided to send their both car on Red Softs for this mini Race, which proved to be a correct decision. Though Alonso struggled in the final few laps with tyre wear and lost two places to McLaren duo, still he managed to gain net four places.

Vettel in his AMR21 once again proved solid, the German gained net two places for tomorrows’ race. He had a chance to take P7 from struggling Alonso but the four-time world Champion took conservative approach to stay away from problems.

George Russell and Alpine’s Esteban Ocon completes the top 10. Russell made contact on Lap 1 with the Ferrari of Carlos Sainz, Sainz coming off worse as he fell to P18 – with the incident to be investigated after the session by the stewards.

Sainz did a fine recovery job after his Lap 1 crash, ending up P11 after a string of neat overtakes, while Pierre Gasly will line up 12th for the British Grand Prix, ahead of the Alfa Romeo of Kimi Raikkonen, who did well to end up 13th after starting P17.

Lance Stroll was 14th for Aston Martin, ahead of Alfa Romeo’s Antonio Giovinazzi, AlphaTauri’s Yuki Tsunoda and the second Williams of Nicholas Latifi – as the two Haas cars of Mick Schumacher and the recovering Mazepin rounded out the order in 18th and 19th, with Perez the sole retirement.