Verstappen faces mammoth task as title race death blow looms in Qatar
Max Verstappen's pace was well off the benchmark set by McLaren title rivals Oscar Piastri and Lando Norris.
When the only practice session in Qatar began, Verstappen looked quick right out of the gate, with his name consistently found at the top of the time sheets throughout FP1
McLaren,though, looked like they were struggling with the MCL39. However, as FP1 has often showed, first appearances can be deceiving.
At around thwe halfway mark Norris languished in P20, before completing a lap that would see him go up to P18, a marginal improvement. On the other side of the garage, Piastri didn't do much better,with the Australian's position oscillating between P10 and P12for a large part of practice. Verstappen's chances at cutting down the gap looked increasingly positive.
Verstappen struggles, McLaren turns the tables
Due to the sprint format, teams chose to do a short race simulation to gather some data ahead of the Sprint race for tomorrow and the Grand Prix on Sunday, before getting ready for the Sprint qualifying session in just a few hours time.
Norris was the first of the McLaren drivers to put a representative lap on the board eeking out a five-tenth gap over Fernando Alonso. Piastri failed to match Norris on his first attempt, but managed to pip the British driver on his second run by 0.058s. Fine margins split the McLaren drivers.
During his last outing on the hard tyres, Verstappen had complained that his RB21 bounced whenever he let off the throttle. Red Bull seemed to have been outsmarted by the issue given Verstappen's lack of substantial improvement in his soft tyre run, leaving him at 0.580s adrift of Piastri's pace.
As they have done throughout the season, Red Bull appear to fail to understand the car enough to extract it's full potential, which could undoubtedly throw Verstappen's title bid into disarray.
Read the session's full report here. Review the Qatar Grand Prix's FP1 results here.
Death blow to Verstappen's title hopes looms
During Sprint qualifying, the Dutchman seemed to be in contention for pole. Nevertheless, as the session progressed McLaren's might would being to impose itself on top of its rivals, including the Dutchman.
During SQ2 Verstappen reiterated his previously stated balance complaints regarding bouncing. The issue only worsened going into SQ3 as the Dutchman stood beaten by teammate Yuki Tsunoda for the first time during a relevant session.
George Russell emerged as a disruptor in the title fight splitting the McLarens of Piastri in P1 and Norris in P3. With Verstappen finishing in P6, the outlook looks increasingly grim going into the point-scoring sessions of the race weekend in Qatar.
Read the Sprint shootout's full session report here. You can review the full results of the session here.
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This is the provisional grid for the F1 Qatar GP sprint race
