It was a game of absurdly fine margins in Sao Paulo on Saturday after a cyclone blew through the city overnight, leaving a damp track and changeable winds in its wake.
The unpredictable conditions made for an eventful sprint race punctuated by a red flag after Oscar Piastri exited stage right at Turn 3, followed in short order by Nico Hulkenberg and Franco Colapinto. Uneasy grip, gusting winds, random factors from lap to lap – how much did kerb strikes from cars running ahead contribute to the carambolage by displacing water? It’s impossible to say definitively.
What we can establish with clarity is that in the similarly nervy qualifying session which followed, Lando Norris learned from the mistake he made in his first Q3 run to ace his second – while Charles Leclerc came tantalisingly close to pole after only just making it through Q1.
That may seem counter-intuitive to readers noting that Andrea Kimi Antonelli will start the grand prix from second place, rather than Leclerc, but Antonelli spent his fastest Q3 lap recouping a deficit he had set up with a mistake at Turn 1, and was always behind Norris – whereas Leclerc briefly got his nose ahead.
Sector 1: Norris sets up his margin
The pressure was on Norris after he locked up at Turn 1 on his first Q3 run, losing eight tenths he was never going to get back – but he carried on pushing to get a feel for what the rest of the track felt like at that point, to feed into his analysis between the runs.
«It was for sure more stressful than I would have liked,» he said afterwards. «Especially because we’ve been very quick all weekend. Just, yeah, I didn’t need that. And I don’t really know how it [the lock-up] happened. I looked at the data quickly between the two runs and I braked earlier with less pressure and still somehow locked up. So yeah, a bit weird, maybe a bit of wind or something.»
At the end of the first sector Norris, Antonelli and Leclerc were separated by milliseconds – but Leclerc was actually fastest, albeit fractionally. As Norris would say later, «my Turn 1 wasn’t amazing», but it was good enough to set up an advantage over Antonelli.
The data indicates the Mercedes was briefly 0.014s up on Norris on the run to Turn 1, but Antonelli took a completely different approach to blending off the throttle and onto the brake – he started getting off the loud pedal earlier, but was slower to clear it completely, and the last of the trio to get on the brakes.
So although Antonelli’s DRS closed later, he still lost speed – because in a car with downforce, just feathering the throttle can deliver the equivalent retardation to hitting the brakes in a high-performance road car. As a result, at the apex of Turn 1 Antonelli was 0.361s down on Norris.
But he was also quicker on the power than both Norris and Leclerc, and he had to feather it less dramatically between Turns 1 and 2 – and although Norris was the first of the three to be fully on the throttle at the exit of Turn 2, he had to go to 36% on the approach. At that moment Antonelli was on 67% throttle.
The data also suggests Norris picked up some wheelspin between Turns 2 and 3, which is how Leclerc came to be 0.048s up on him as they took to the DRS-assisted straight between Turns 3 and 4. But Leclerc was 0.065s up by the time they hit the activation zone, which indicates just how much momentum Norris lost.
Antonelli was the fastest of the three from just ahead of the Turn 2 apex all the way to the end of the first sector, but he had more deficit to claw back – from that 0.361s at Turn 1, at the braking zone for Turn 4 he was just 0.024s adrift of the McLaren. But Norris was gaining ground on Leclerc, whose advantage stood at just 0.029s.
Sector 2: Turns 4, 6, 7 and 8 prove costly
Turn 4 is where it all got away from Leclerc. Again, Antonelli was first to shed speed under braking by backing off the throttle and being first on the brake. Norris had a similar trajectory off the throttle but braked later, while Leclerc was a little too ambitious, lifting off the throttle later and less steeply, and not quite clearing it.
At the apex of Turn 4 that equates to Leclerc’s brief advantage evaporating to a 0.130s deficit. He was earlier on the throttle than Norris – who had to feather slightly – but not enough to stem the tide.
In contrast, Antonelli was able to pick up the throttle earlier than both of them, and in much more linear fashion. But, again, that early loss of speed before the corner cost him more than he was able to regain. On the run through Turn 5 towards Turn 6, Antonelli was 0.06s off Norris, Leclerc 0.07s.
Norris had a longer and more decisive lift on the approach to Turn 6, and was less assertive in getting on the throttle completely as the track opened out through Turn 7, but the McLaren’s edge in high-speed corners meant this didn’t harm his lap time in comparison with the others. In contrast, while Leclerc lifted off less and picked up the throttle earlier, he was a good 10km/h slower than his rivals between Turns 6 and 7 because the Ferrari was sliding and scrubbing off speed. The deficit of both drivers to Norris opened up to more than a tenth of a second.
Antonelli briefly enjoyed a slight speed advantage between Turns 7 and 8, but he lifted off early once again so by the apex of Turn 8 he was 0.287s off Norris. Leclerc, still fighting his car, was 0.170s down.
The Ferrari’s lacklustre slow-corner performance – especially in this bumpy section – was exposed as the deficit grew to 0.201 at the apex of Turn 11, where Leclerc’s team-mate Lewis Hamilton had his double spin in Friday practice. Leclerc did well to hold on through Turn 9, and close in on the short straight which followed, but after Turn 10 he was pretty much done.
Antonelli’s performance through sector two is one of remarkable contrasts – from that big loss in Turn 4, a recouping followed by a plateau, then another big loss to Norris and Leclerc at Turn 8. As the track opened out at the Turn 9 exit he overturned his deficit to Leclerc and, though both the Ferrari and Mercedes lost out to the McLaren at Turn 10, Antonelli recovered more quickly – partly because Leclerc had to back out of the throttle slightly before Turn 11.
Sector 3: Game over for Leclerc
Turn 12, «Young Sow» as the commentariat invariably pronounce it, is a relatively sharp uphill left-hander. The queasy grip levels here moved both Antonelli and Norris to get right off the throttle ahead of the apex, but Leclerc was chasing lap time so he rolled the dice: a more gradual feather off the loud pedal before getting on the brakes.
But again, even though Leclerc got on the throttle earlier, he had shed too much speed and was 12km/h slower than Norris as they bore down on the corner. Antonelli was earlier on the throttle than Norris but the McLaren was able to carry much more speed.
As a result, the deficit opened again – to 0.327s for Leclerc, 0.192s for Antonelli. With just a curved straight to follow, they were never going to regain that ground.
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