SEVENTH RACE WEEKEND, SEVENTH POLE POSITION FOR MAX VERSTAPEN

Max Verstappen bounced back from a difficult build-up to take Pole position for the 2024 Emilia-Romagna Grand Prix in a tight qualifying session at Imola in which he beat Oscar Piastri and Lando Norris by less than a tenth of a second.

There was disappointment for Piastri after the session, however as the Australian was handed a three-place grid penalty by the race stewards for imnpeding Kevin Magnussen earlier in the session.

In Friday’s practice sessions Verstappen had branded his RB20 car "difficult" and the Red Bull driver went into Saturday looking for dramatic improvements in balance and performance.

Those seemed to be materialising in the morning’s practice session, but crashes for Aston Martin’s Fernando Alonso and Red Bull team-mate Sergio Pérez derailed that process and Verstappen went into qualifying largely blind.

However, throughout qualifying Verstappen found more and more pace until the final run of Q3 when he improved marginally on his provisional pole time to seal his eighth consecutive pole and his seventh of 2024 seven hundredths of a second ahead of Piastri.

"I felt more comfortable," Verstappen said afterwards. "I could attack corners finally a bit more and it all started to come together and it really came together in Q3. It was just following the track, to be honest. A really difficult weekend so far, even this morning, so I'm incredibly happy to be on pole here."

At the beginning of the one-hour session it was Esteban Ocon who set the pace in Q1 on Soft tyres to top the timesheet ahead of Mercedes AMG’ Lewis Hamilton.

Charles Leclerc then beat Ocon by just 0.002, though the fact that the Monegasque driver did so on Medium tyres boded well for Ferrari’s hopes in the session.

Norris then took over at the top, also on Soft tyres. Verstappen then vaulted to the top of the order. His stay in P1 was brief, though, as first Piastri and then Norris moved ahead with the latter taking top spot.

In the final moments of the session, Nico Hülkenberg sprung a surprise by posting a lap to take P1. Verstappen was on another run, however, and the Dutchman claimed the best time of the session.

Behind him, Leclerc put in another lap on Mediums and he took second place, just five hundredths off Max. There was no place in Q2 for Valtteri Bottas and Zhou Guanyu nor for Kevin Magnussen, Fernando Alonso, Logan Sargeant.

The Bulls were out early in Q2, with Verstappen posting a lap to take P1 ahead of Pérez on second place. However, the Red Bulls were then split by Carlos Sainz Jr. and Leclerc then claimed the quickest time of the session.

There as also a second surprise of the session when RB’s Yuki Tusnoda jumped ahead of Verstappen to take P3 three hundredths of a second ahead of the Dutchman.

In the final runs, Verstappen took top spot, ahead of Leclerc and Tsunoda. Behind them, improvements were being made and RB’s Daniel Ricciardo scraped into the top 10.

That left Pérez in P11 and though the Mexican was just starting his final flyer he couldn’t find the necessary pace and he slipped to his first Q2 exit of the year, 0.015s off Ricciardo and ahead of Ocon, Lance Stroll, Alex Albon and Pierre Gasly.

At the start of the top 10 shootout, Max took provisional pole, 0.073s ahead of Norris, with Leclerc in third, a further seven hundredths back. And in a tense sequence of final runs, the Dutchman grabbed his eight​h consecutive pole, just 0.074 ahead of Piastri, with Norris also within a tenth of the champion in third place.

Verstappen’s achievement equals the consecutive poles record held by Ayrton Senna. "It’s very special," said Max of equalling Senna’s record. "It's 30 years since he passed away at this track, so of course I'm very pleased to get pole here. In a way, it's a nice memory to him. He was an incredible Formula 1 driver, especially in qualifying laps as well. So, yeah, a great day for me, a great day for the team!"

Following the session, the stewards summoned Piastri over his incident with Magnussen at the end of Q1 and after hearing from both drivers and their teams, Piastri was given a three-place grid penalty for tomorrow’s race.

It means that Norris advances to the front row alongside Verstappen, with Leclerc in P3 ahead of Sainz and then Piastri.

George Russell will start sixth for Mercedes AMG ahead of Yuki Tsunoda and the second Mercedes AMG of Lewis Hamilton, while Daniel Ricciardo will start at the front of row five ahead of P10 qualifier Nico Hülkenberg.