Magnussen reigns supreme in Brazil chaos to start first in sprint race
The rain that had previously fallen on the Interlagos circuit meant that nerves were the dominant tone among the drivers and their teams at the start of the session, as by the start of the session there were hardly any drops falling and the track was drying out as the minutes went by.
Everyone started on intermediate tyres and switched to dry tyres in Q1, which led to constant changes in positions and lap times. It was a matter of getting the best lap at the end of Q1 to keep it simple, but the Ferraris were left to rue the fact that Leclerc was 12th and Sainz 14th. Latifi, Zhou, Bottas, Tsunoda and Schumacher were unlucky to be eliminated.
When it looked like the rain wasn't going to show up, it did. Verstappen was already warning that the sky was getting darker and Sainz scared by radioing his team that "it was raining a lot", so the situation changed completely from the previous round. If in Q1 the ideal had been to try to set the best time at the end, in Q2 it seemed that the best thing to do was to set the best times at the beginning, when the track was still dry. But fortunately for Sainz, the cloud seemed to lift and he managed to avoid elimination at the last minute, unlike Albon, Gasly, Vettel, Ricciardo and Stroll.
At this point, the star of the show for the TV crews was the teams' weather radar, which announced a possible return of the cloud in the final minutes of the last round, making it mandatory to ensure a good time at the start of Q3. The only brave (or perhaps daring) one was Leclerc, who went out on intermediates despite his astonishment at seeing the other nine drivers on slicks, although it didn't take him long to return to the pits.
The teams' prediction came true prematurely as the rain started to fall heavily, causing Russell to run off the track with eight minutes to go and race direction decided to bring out the red flag. The unexpected beneficiary of this mishap was Haas' Kevin Magnussen, who was rewarded for being first out on track and was in disbelief when his team told him: "You're joking. I've never felt like this before in my life, but let's not celebrate yet."
With the rain pouring down relentlessly, it was impossible to improve the lap times and, with the exception of Mercedes and Hamilton, no team brought out their drivers at the restart, so a Danish driver who couldn't get overjoyed was first ahead of Verstappen and Russell.
See the full results of the qualification
"I don't know what to say, the team brought me out at the right time. It's incredible, I thank my team for this opportunity after a sabbatical year. I didn't expect this. In the sprint race you have to attack to the maximum, we are going to try something fun," said a still in disbelief Magnussen in the post-qualifying interview.
