Post Qualifying news round-up: Wolff on “dirty driving”, Leclerc’s confusion & more

Formula One’s first Qualifying session in Qatar has been complete, with Lewis Hamilton gliding to pole position at the Losail Circuit outside of Doha.

With just three races left in the season, Max Verstappen and Lewis Hamilton are running out of time to get their hands on the Title trophy, and following this morning’s verdict on the pair’s “off track shenanigans”, the duo will be racing harder than ever for the top step on the podium.

With just 14 points between them, Max Verstappen leads, but with the element of the unknown at the Losail track, tomorrow could be anyone’s game.

The AlphaTauris and Alpine teams have performed exceptionally well so far, while more surprisingly the Ferraris and McLaren teammates were struggling.

Charles Leclerc, who was eliminated in Q2, told reporters he could not figure out what the issue was with his SF21, and so they’ll have a lot of work ahead of them tonight to figure it out.

Meanwhile, Toto Wolff made his opinion on the steward’s rejection of their review request known when speaking to Sky Sports, and said he thinks the outcome will incite a culture of “dirty driving” heading into the last few races of the season.

Here’s a round-up of all the headlines post-quali:

Hamilton secures pole after “digging deep” to find performance lift

Lewis Hamilton has secured the first-ever Formula One pole position at the Losail Circuit in Qatar this afternoon.

Taking off behind him will be the Red Bull of Max Verstappen in second and next in line, the Mercedes of Valtteri Bottas in third.

Speaking after Qualifying, the pole sitter said; “Yesterday was a really difficult day for me actually. Thursday and Friday I wasn’t feeling too well and so really struggled throughout practice. I was just off yesterday so really had to dig deep.

“I was here until midnight last night working with the engineers, who also always work so late, they’re such hard workers, and found a lot of areas which I could improve.

“Made a lot of changes for P3 and it seemed to work. Then of course you’ve got to carry that through to qualifying, but I’m so grateful for the timings they put us out on track, we didn’t have any traffic.

“Then that last lap was beautiful. It was a really sweet lap.”

Hamilton added: “I had a bit of a stomach ache from Wednesday but felt fantastic today. I slept well last night so that makes a big difference.”

Wolff

This morning, stewards denied Mercedes’ request for a review into the incident between Lewis Hamilton and Max Verstappen at Turn four in Sao Paulo.

While some were delighted to see officials allowing such close racing to play out, Toto Wolff has suggested that there may be a negative effect on drivers going forward.

“I think it’s a very surprising outcome, because irrelevant of how Brazil has been judged, I think that is water under the bridge,” Wolff told Sky on Saturday.

“In my opinion, what it says is you can just launch yourself into a corner and drag the other car out of line. And that obviously can lead to quite some dirtier driving going forward.

“We don’t want to have a messy situation tomorrow, in Saudi Arabia and Abu Dhabi, because that would be really bad.”

Wolff said that several drivers are just as confused as spectators about the situation, and what it means going forward – should a similar scenario occur.

“I think all the drivers that spoke up said that it was a decision that was also surprising to them,” he said.

“Obviously you need to adapt your driving style to the new situation, but it’s still surprising for everybody that’s in the car and for us too.”

Leclerc

It was a tough day for Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc, who struggled to find grip during qualifying and was eliminated in Q2.

The Monegasque driver told reporters that he still doesn’t know what happened, or if there was a problem to pinpoint and so, it’ll be a long night for the prancing horses, to right whatever the issue there may be.

Speaking to the media, Leclerc said he had “no idea” what happened, and that “normally I’m quite good at understanding what’s wrong, in a qualifying lap especially, which is one of my strengths.”

He went on to say: “This one is a very strange one. I just had no grip from all four tyres. It’s not like I had a balance issue or anything like that. I was just struggling with all four tyres with grip.

“So we need to look into it whether there was anything strange or not. If there’s not anything strange, then I will be very happy to understand what I did wrong. Let’s see.”

The 24-year-old said he experienced no issued in practice earlier today, but once qualifying got underway, he was losing five or six tenths in the first sector.

“The tyres just felt at their limits. I don’t know if I wasn’t putting the car, the tyres in the right window before the lap. I have no idea for now, but we need to find an explanation.

“I just cannot explain it.”

Qatar GP Starting Grid

Lights out will take place tomorrow, Sunday November 21, at the Losail International Circuit in Doha at 14:00 Irish time.

Here’s the full starting grid:

Gasly and Alonso react to performance boost in Qatar

Alpine’s Fernando Alonso and Pierre Gasly experienced a major boost in performance at the Losail Circuit this afternoon, with everything to play for tomorrow at such an unfamiliar track.

Here’s what they had to say in the aftermath of today’s Qualifying:

“Really happy,” Gasly told Sky F1. “”The whole weekend has been really good so far, we started with a really good car, really good balance, and we’ve kept that performance all the way through the weekend so far.”

“It was fantastic. The car performed really well all weekend, not only in qualy,” said Alonso to Sky Sports F1.

“It was very enjoyable to drive. I told the team. If you put the fuel in, I could be all night long driving here and wait for you here tomorrow!

“There are certain circuits that seems to be better for our package, this is one of those, and let’s see tomorrow. Saturday doesn’t mean much, it’s a good starting position but the points are given tomorrow and we need to maximise this position.”