The Lance Stroll redemption

Photo by Vince Mignott/MB Media/Getty Images

Recapping the winners and losers from qualifying at the São Paulo Grand Prix

As the Formula 1 season winds down, things have not been going Lance Stroll’s way.

Entering this weekend’s São Paulo Grand Prix, the Canadian driver had finished in the points in just three of the last ten races. While his most recent points finish was the best of the lot — a seventh-place finish at the United States Grand Prix — that finish was aided by a double disqualification that dropped both Lewis Hamilton and Charles Leclerc out of the points, and pushed Stroll up two spots from ninth.

Also during this period? Stroll missed out on the Singapore Grand Prix when a hard crash in qualifying left him unfit to start the race. He was also admonished by F1 after an incident at the Qatar Grand Prix, when he pushed a team member in the garage.

That this poor run of form has coincided with Aston Martin slipping to fifth place in the Constructors’ standings has not helped matters. It has also opened the door to questions about his future, not just with Aston Martin, but in the sport itself.

Stroll brushed back that criticism ahead of qualifying at the São Paulo Grand Prix, indicating that his “plan” is to be back in the seat for 2024, but anyone around the sport would tell you that he needed to put in a good performance, and soon, to ease such concerns.

He delivered that performance on Friday.

In a rain-shortened qualifying session, Stroll advanced to his first Q3 since the Dutch Grand Prix at the end of August. Aston Martin managed to get the timing right during Q3, sending him and teammate Fernando Alonso out right at the start of the session as the skies darkened around Interlagos. The result? A P3 for Stroll, a second-row lockout for the team as Alonso is set to start fourth, and a massive redemption story for the beleaguered driver.

Sounds like a winner in our book.

Winners: Aston Martin

Stroll is certainly a large part of the story, but this was a massive Friday for a team that needed a massive day. If you needed a visual for how things have gone for Aston Martin in recent weeks, here is a graphic from Formula1Points to consider:

That is the battle between Aston Martin and McLaren in the Constructors’ standings. As you can see, while McLaren has rocketed into fourth place, Aston Martin has been largely stagnant since around the Dutch Grand Prix.

However, Friday’s qualifying results — which saw the team lock out the second row while Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri are set to start in seventh and tenth — give the team a shot at perhaps closing the gap to McLaren on Sunday.

To hear Stroll tell it in the post-qualifying press conference, he believes the team made their own luck on Friday.

“But I think we did a good job getting both cars, me and Fernando, at the front of the queue. The team did a good job at giving us an attempt at the front of the queue before the bad weather came in and it looks like a lot of guys missed their laps or didn’t get them in or for whatever reason,” said Stroll. “So I think we made our own luck today.”

We’ll see if that luck holds over the weekend, but this was the kind of day the team needed.

Losers: AlphaTauri

Both Yuki Tsunoda and Daniel Ricciardo missed out on Q2 by less than half a second.

Tsunoda was furious when told of his P16, complaining of being impeded on the pit lane exit by Pierre Gasly. However, while Gasly has been summoned to speak with race stewards regarding the alleged impeding, that will be little solace for Tsunoda and the team following Friday’s result.

This means that after a thrilling performance from the team last weekend in the Mexico City Grand Prix — which saw Ricciardo qualify fourth and finish the Grand Prix in P7 for the team’s best finish of the year — both drivers were out in Q1 Friday.

“It’s frustrating because we were definitely faster than what we showed, and there was the potential for Q2, and maybe even Q3, but we didn’t get it right on the last lap. I didn’t get the tyres in the right spot for the start of the lap, so I came too hot into Turn 1, and we lost a chunk of time in the first Sector,” said Ricciardo in the team’s post-qualifying media report.

“From then on, the lap started to spiral a little,” added Ricciardo. “On the other hand, I’m happy with the improvements I found in the car compared to the morning. I’ll have a look tonight at how we can extract the performance for the remainder of the weekend.”

Winner: Charles Leclerc

Another driver who seemed to get the timing right?

Charles Leclerc at Ferrari.

The Ferrari driver admitted after qualifying that he believed his first lap in Q3 was not good enough, but sometimes it is better to be lucky than good. After nearly giving up on his first push lap, Leclerc saw it through.

And it ended up being good enough for P2.

“I’ve never experienced that in my career,” said Leclerc following qualifying. “The wind change was crazy.

“There was just absolutely no grip from sector two onwards, which was extremely confusing because you had no idea where the balance will be in the corner you will get into. It made things very interesting, but luckily I kept it more or less tidy.”

As noted above Leclerc even considered bailing out of the push lap and “coming in at the end of the lap,” but he forged on. “It felt so bad that I was like, okay, this is not good enough. I’m P10 for sure, but luckily I wasn’t and second place is good.”

With Ferrari locked in a tight battle with Mercedes for second place in the Constructors’ Championship, they may be glad he stayed out there.

Losers: Alfa Romeo

Alfa Romeo came out of the summer shutdown with a clear goal in mind: Catching Williams for seventh place in the Constructors’ Championship.

That goal took a big hit last week, when Ricciardo’s stunning seventh-place finish pulled AlphaTauri level with Alfa Romeo on points, and gave AlphaTauri the tiebreaker in the standings.

Now Alfa Romeo sits ninth in the standings, and instead of fighting with Williams for P7, it seems a duel with AlphaTauri for P8 is their fate over the final few races of the season.

This is why seeing both Valtteri Bottas and Zhou Guanyu knocked on in Q1 is a bitter pill to swallow.

Sure, on the one hand, they can take heart in seeing both Ricciardo and Tsunoda bounced out in Q1 as well, so neither team can claim a true advantage heading into the Grand Prix on Sunday. But if Alfa Romeo indeed finishes behind AlphaTauri at season’s end, they may point to this qualifying session as a big missed opportunity.

Loser: Sergio Pérez

A year ago at Interlagos, Sergio Pérez’s chase for second place in the Drivers’ Championship took a bit hit during the race.

This year, that pursuit took a hit during qualifying.

While Red Bull got the timing right for Max Verstappen — more on that in a second — Pérez was lined up at the back of the field for the start of Q3. The result? He had to back off his push lap when the yellow flag came out for a spin by Oscar Piastri, and with the ensuing red flag, Pérez is set to start the Grand Prix in P9.

Lewis Hamilton, the biggest threat to his second-place dreams, will start the race in P5.

If — hypothetically — the two drivers finish the race in those same spots, Pérez would see his lead over Hamilton shrink to just 12 points.

Of course, there is a lot of weekend left, starting with the F1 Sprint race on Saturday. But for Pérez, this was not the day he wanted.

Winner: Max Verstappen

The man did secure pole position, after all.

Verstappen secured his 12th pole position of the season on Friday, and like Leclerc and Aston Martin he managed to get the timing right for his Q3 run, propelling him to the front of the pack.

“We lined up to go out for Q3 and you could see the sky was just black and it was like, ‘well, if that rain hits, it’s going to be a lot’. So the out-lap was quite quick,” said Verstappen trackside after qualifying.

“Then we went for the lap, the first sector felt all right and then the rest of the lap felt shocking,” he added. “I think what happened throughout the lap was the rain was coming in, it was not hitting the track yet, but the wind increased a lot and it changed direction to a tailwind in the middle sector. And the car was just sliding all over the place.

“I was shouting on the radio ‘what the hell happened, we are nowhere’. But the team just told me to keep pushing because they said everyone was struggling out there.”

Loser: My sanity

Finally, an apology to my dear readers. Attempts at a live blog session for Friday’s qualifying session resulted in a failure due to some technical difficulties. So I do apologize to those who were trying to follow along Friday afternoon, and I do appreciate those who made the attempt.

Better luck next time.