Lando Norris took his third successive grand prix pole at Interlagos on Saturday, lapping a sodden circuit in 1:27.470 to beat George Russell by 0.204 seconds in a Sao Paulo Grand Prix qualifying session stopped for 1 hour 23 minutes by a downpour.
Russell will not join the McLaren driver on the front row. A five-place penalty for a power unit change drops the Mercedes driver to seventh and promotes newly crowned world champion Kimi Antonelli, who was third fastest and 0.625secs adrift, to second. Liam Lawson of Racing Bulls starts third, with Audi’s Nico Hulkenberg fourth.
It was the 20th pole of Norris’s career, and the outgoing champion was candid about how much he owed to the weather. “We’re lucky it’s wet, because if it was dry, I wouldn’t be sitting here,” he said. “The wet kind of gave me an opportunity and I made the most of it.”
Aquaplaning at 200km/h
The session lasted only two minutes and 37 seconds before the rain forced the first red flag of the afternoon. When running resumed nearly an hour and a half later, conditions remained on the edge of what drivers considered acceptable.
“Q1 was extremely challenging,” Russell said. “The visibility was zero down the straight into Turn Four. I was wheel-spinning in fifth gear, over 200km/h, aquaplaning. If that was a race, there was no way we should be driving in that because the chances of seeing a really, really horrific incident are very, very high.”
Q2 was halted by a second red flag when Haas debutant Camara crashed with less than a minute remaining. In Q3, the rain intensified with around seven minutes left, leaving the early laps as the decisive ones.
“It was about getting two laps in at the beginning and not making any mistakes, and that’s exactly what we did,” Norris said.
Russell, who has endured a difficult season alongside Antonelli, was told to abandon his final effort behind the Williams of Alex Albon and replied over team radio: “I don’t want to be P2. I want to be P1!” He still took encouragement from the day, saying it “reminds me again that I haven’t forgotten how to drive”.
Fernando Alonso reached Q3 for the first time this year, qualifying ninth for Aston Martin, though he said the tyres were “ice cold” in the final phase and left him with no grip.
Penalties reshape the grid
Power unit changes have scrambled the order behind Norris. Max Verstappen, Sergio Perez and Lewis Hamilton all took new units and will start from the back, while Charles Leclerc, fourth fastest, carries a 10-place penalty.
Oscar Piastri, 12th in qualifying and more than a second off his team-mate’s pace in the opening two phases, is promoted to 10th by those drops. The top 10 on the grid reads:
- 1. Lando Norris (McLaren)
- 2. Kimi Antonelli (Mercedes)
- 3. Liam Lawson (Racing Bulls)
- 4. Nico Hulkenberg (Audi)
- 5. Isack Hadjar (Red Bull)
- 6. Oliver Bearman (Haas)
- 7. George Russell (Mercedes)
- 8. Fernando Alonso (Aston Martin)
- 9. Alex Albon (Williams)
- 10. Oscar Piastri (McLaren)
Verstappen, eliminated in Q2 without setting a time, lines up 20th, with Hamilton 22nd after qualifying 11th. Interlagos has precedent for that sort of recovery: in the wet 2024 race, Verstappen won from 17th on the grid, while Norris, on pole after a five-red-flag qualifying session in which Russell also finished second, came home sixth.
Why Norris wants more rain
Norris went on to convert pole into victory here in 2025, but he does not expect the McLaren to repeat that on a dry track. “If I want to win tomorrow, we need rain,” he said. “In the dry conditions, we don’t quite have the speed of our competitors.”
The forecast offers him some hope, with light rain predicted for the 14:00 local start (17:00 GMT). “I’m hoping for a wet race,” Norris said. Russell, needing to make up six places, shares that view: “I hope it is wet tomorrow. I feel I’ve got a greater chance if it’s wet.”
Plenty remains at stake despite Antonelli having wrapped up the drivers’ title in Mexico last weekend. Mercedes, on 630 points to Ferrari’s 504, can secure the constructors’ championship on Sunday if they outscore Ferrari by at least three points.
The fight for second in the drivers’ standings is also tight, with Verstappen on 261 points, Hamilton on 259, Russell on 250 and Leclerc on 245. With three of those four starting outside the top 10, Russell has the clearest opportunity to close the gap. McLaren arrived in Brazil 17 points behind Red Bull for third in the constructors’ standings, and a Norris win with Verstappen at the rear of the field would go a long way towards erasing that deficit.
Sports journalist and editor at SportsPortal.net. Covers cricket, football, Formula 1, tennis, and basketball with a focus on how global sports connect with Pakistani audiences. Follows the PSL, Pakistan national cricket team, Premier League, and major international tournaments. Has reported on sports for digital audiences since 2021.
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