The Englishman precedes Antonelli by 11 cents who says: “It’s a shame, I thought I had a good lap”. Half a disappointment for the Reds
The first pole position on the new Madrid circuit goes to the reigning world champion Lando Norris who mocks the current World Championship leader with his Mc Laren Kimi Antonelli. The Englishman precedes the Italian by just nine thousandths of a second but all in all Kimi can be satisfied because his Mercedes also demonstrated at the Madring that it is very fast and because his direct opponents for the title are behind him. The teammate Russell was sixth fastest and will therefore start from the third row, while Lewis Hamilton he was Ferrari’s best, finishing in fourth place. The seven-time world champion cherished the dream of pole position until the last lap, after finishing Q2 with the best time. The third time set by Max Verstappen with Red Bull shows how much balance there is between the four teams competing in the world championship: the Dutchman with the third time is only 14 hundredths of a second behind Norris.
Antonelli disappointed
“I thought mine was a good lap – admitted Antonelli, disappointed by those few thousandths that didn’t put him in pole position – but Norris did better and I congratulate him! It was difficult to find the balance with the asphalt being so hot in these qualifying sessions, I did my best to find the limit and put myself in the best position, we’ll see what I can do tomorrow.” Fifth place is not satisfactory for Charles Leclerc either: “The sensations were goodwe paid a little for the power unit, but if I look at it today I think we have maximized everything, perhaps there was something more to do but perhaps the others also think so on a new circuit. Fifth is what it is, let’s try to do better tomorrow. The degradation of the tires on this track is very high then we need to see on these citizens because it usually changes a lot from practice to the races, it will be a very difficult race for tire management”. Perhaps the great opportunity for pole position was for Lewis Hamilton, today it seemed within reach, the Englishman is very disappointed.”I didn’t feel too close to poleit’s true that at the beginning I was first, then I don’t know what the others did. Surely there is something that we don’t have, we can’t do much better. An extra set of tires isn’t a great advantage because in the end things balance out.”
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