F1 Brazilian GP Live Commentary and Updates – Sprint Quali & Race
Saturday's action from the 20th round of the 2023 Formula 1 season
Interlagos hosts the closing leg of the final triple header of the year, with just two races remaining of the 2023 season after the chequered flag falls on Sunday's grand prix.
While Max Verstappen and Red Bull may have respectively wrapped up the titles, the battle between Lewis Hamilton and Sergio Perez for second in the drivers' standings is fierce.
As is the fight at the bottom of the constructors' standings, with the margins separating Williams, AlphaTauri, Alfa Romeo and Haas closing at recent events.
Following yesterday's rain-shortened qualifying session headed by Verstappen, the sixth and final sprint race of the year will start at 6:30pm GMT, following sprint qualifying at 2:00pm GMT.
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Summary
Summary
Verstappen wins the final F1 sprint of the season, his fourth sprint success in 2023
Norris is second with Perez completing in the top three
Hello and welcome to Autosport's live text coverage of Saturday's track action from Interlagos. Sprint qualifying will get going in a little under half an hour ahead of the sprint race later on.
We have sad news to report, as colleagues in Germany have informed us that Zakspeed team founder Erich Zakowski passed away yesterday at the age of 89. His team briefly made it to Formula 1 in the 1980s, with Martin Brundle scoring its best result with fifth at Imola in 1987. The Autosport team sends its condolences to his family and friends.
Zakowski (centre) ran Jonathan Palmer (in cockpit), Christian Danner, Huub Rothengatter, Bernd Schneider, Piercarlo Ghinzani and Aguri Suzuki during his five-year Formula 1 tenure between 1985 and 1989.
Yesterday was a pretty dramatic one at the track, if you're just catching up on things. Pirelli reported concerns about the condition of the track and requested that it be cleaned prior to qualifying, which resulted in a delay that left F1 in the eye of the storm.
Charles Leclerc said he considered abandoning his final Q3 lap that netted second as his Ferrari "was extremely difficult to drive - no grip", while poleman Max Verstappen said his lap felt "terrible". Here's what the top two had to say.
The triple header has been heavy going so far for Aston Martin, but the green team turned things around in spectacular fashion yesterday as Lance Stroll and Fernando Alonso locked out the second row in third and fourth positions. For Stroll it was the best qualifying of the year, and the Canadian felt Aston had "made our own luck" by securing a spot at the head of the queue leaving the pits in Q3.
As it turns out, Aston learned a lesson from Kevin Magnussen's shock pole for Haas in 2022 when he headed out first and therefore got the best of the track conditions. Here's what the team's leadership had to say about its turnaround in fortunes with a car that remains a mix and match of COTA upgrades and older parts.
There were hard luck stories aplenty in the paddock after the session, with Sergio Perez disgruntled to end up ninth. The Red Bull driver felt he was on course for a front row start until he happened upon yellow flags for Oscar Piastri's off at the final corner. Incidentally, that meant the McLaren rookie ended up 10th without a time in Q3.
Far from bemoaning bad luck, Mercedes boss Toto Wolff reckoned his team was not "adaptive" enough to the conditions and that a failure to prepare its tyres better cost it a shot at pole. Here's what he had to say.
Mercedes' frustrations were compounded by a two-place grid penalty handed to George Russell, while both Alpine drivers Pierre Gasly and Esteban Ocon were also demoted two spots. All were found guilty of impeding at the pit exit during qualifying.
But of course today is another day and the weather is looking a lot more promising. The timing screens tell us that the prospect of rain for the sprint shootout is 0%.
Just how reliable yesterday's running is as a barometer is tricky to tell. You never know what teams are doing in practice, especially on a sprint weekend when they need to cram all their set-up work in before cars enter parc ferme, while qualifying was held much later in the day in totally different conditions.
Speaking of parc ferme, the subject came up on Friday during a media briefing with technical staff. It was revealed that teams are discussing the relaxation of regulations governing parc ferme, but as Ferrari sporting director Diego Ioverno put it, are mindful of letting the ‘fantasies’ of their engineers run wild.
We're into the sixth and final sprint weekend of the year, and it's fair to say that they've varied in terms of the entertainment on offer. Brazil's overtaking-friendly layout is expected to be among the more popular, but talks are underway about tweaking the format for 2023 with the qualifying sessions swapped around. More on that here.
Remember, there are slightly different rules involved with sprint qualifying. You can read about them here, but the top-line info you need to know is that new tyres are mandatory for each phase of qualifying: medium tyres for SQ1 and SQ2, soft tyres for SQ3.
Sainz was fastest through the first and final sectors, while Hamilton has the quickest middle sector of anybody so far. Just 0.074s split them at the line.
Verstappen sounds flustered on the radio as Perez comes by him into the final corner, thinking he had blocked a flyer. But Gianpiero Lambiase replies telling him that the Mexican's overtake was not expected.
A lurid slide through Turn 2 has Oscar Piastri down in 14th and in danger of elimination. He's unable to improve on his second flier, but can anybody else take advantage?
Magnussen radios in to tell his team he has something stuck in one of his front wheels, which he believes to be a deflector. But he's in a position of relative safety in fifth for the time being, ahead of Norris and Leclerc.
Yikes. Replays show Alonso was trawling slowly off-line through Turn 3 before moving slightly left just as Ocon came barrelling down his inside. The contact on Ocon's right-rear sent him spinning into the tyre barriers that collected so many cars back in 2003.
Interesting, replays from on-board Ocon show he had a big tank slapper exiting Turn 2 which put him off-line and wider than he normally would have been at the point of impact.
Russell, Norris, Piastri and - somewhat redundantly - Ocon will be investigated after the session for failing to follow race director's instructions regarding maximum delta time.
We mentioned the car graveyard at Turn 3 back in 2003. Jenson Button, Michael Schumacher, Antonio Pizzonia, Justin Wilson, Jos Verstappen and Juan Pablo Montoya were all caught out there by a river running across the track.
Thinking of other famous incidents at Interlagos's Turn 3, what about Nick Heidfeld and the medical car in 2002? He'd attempted to thread the needle to the left of Enrique Bernoldi's crashed Arrows during the warmup, but only hit the door of the parked Merc. This amazing picture by James Moy catches the moment.
