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The start of the decisive third stage came with surprises from its opening laps, as while Verstappen managed to set the fastest time at the time, no one expected Charles Leclerc to be his closest follower at the time, with a 0.022 difference with Mercedes behind .
But Mercedes followed a three-start strategy, and its drivers were able, in the middle of the class, to take the lead, with Bottas clocking 53.377 seconds, while Russell was 0.142 seconds behind him.
The last minute and a half was the decisive one, with nine drivers returning, except for Charles Leclerc, who had no sets of new tires.
But Bottas was unable to improve his time and the breath held in pursuit of Russell, who was about to improve his time, and also Verstappen.
Russell, however, completed his lap and was just 0.026 seconds from pole position for the first time in his career.
Verstappen will start third after being just 0.056 seconds slower than Bottas, but he is optimistic about the race given his strong pace.
No one managed to beat Leclerc’s time, and the Ferrari driver miraculously took off from fourth place.
As for Sergio Pérez, he will start from fifth place against Daniel Kviat and Daniel Ricciardo.
Carlos Sainz, Jr., Pierre Gasly and Lance Stroll completed the top ten.
Section two
The second part of qualifying focused on the qualifying attempt on medium tires. Despite its poor performance, Ferrari seemed interested in trying to cross the yellow tires in two different races.
The performance of the cars was incredibly close, as about half a second separated the first 13 cars.
On this stage came some surprises, as Renault driver Esteban Ocon, who will start from 11th ahead of Alexander Albon, was knocked out of the pace of his colleague Verstappen, despite the latter qualifying on soft tires, a Unlike the duo of Mercedes.
Red Bull manager Christian Horner seemed disappointed that Albon had been out of the second division, increasing the Thai’s attention to his seat for the 2021 season.
The same goes for Sebastian Vettel, who will start his penultimate race with Ferrari from 13th place, although it appears that the engine that Ferrari installed in the German car is relatively old and has traveled long distances.
Antonio Giovinazzi finished 14th, while Lando Norris canceled his last attempt after slowing down his first three laps and would start from 15th.
section one
Given the short turnaround, times were generally very tight, with coverage of a second and a half of the 20 drivers.
That’s why the competition was epic to cross to Second Division, but unsurprisingly, the Ferrari-powered teams were suffering notably.
The performance drew ever closer to the end of the decisive second starts, as less than a second covered the first 19, with the exception of Haas rider Pietro Vittipaldi, who would start from the end of qualifying in any case as a result of the penalty for change of power unit.
The first leg ended with the departure of Haas driver Kevin Magnussen, while Nicholas Latifi faced some pressure with his nonessential colleague Jack Aitken less than a tenth of a second behind him, while the last row would bring together Kimi Raikkonen and Vittipaldi.
As for the lead, Valtteri Bottas was the first to break the 54-second barrier this weekend, registering 53.904 seconds.
