With Ferrari's Charles Leclerc banished to the back of the grid for the Canadian GP (due to engine-change penalties), the pressure was off as Red Bull's Max Verstappen headed into qualifying for Sunday's Canadian GP. Except that it rained. And anything can happen in the wet.
Showing his class, though, the World Champion perfectly prosecuted all three segments of qualifying to take the pole by the margin of 0.7sec - not from Ferrari's Carlos Sainz but from 40-year-old Fernando Alonso, who dazzled all day in the blue-and-pink Alpine-Renault. Sainz duly qualified third - ahead of Mercedes' Lewis Hamilton, who watched his team-mate, George Russell, slide onto the grass on slicks in the closing minutes - and the two Haas-Ferrari drivers, Kevin Magnussen and Mick Schumacher. It was - you might say - a qualifying session with a difference, as Peter Windsor details in this video.
✅ Check out more posts with related topics:
