Are we headed to another dominant Saturday from McLaren, or will their rivals spring a surprise in Formula 1 qualifying at the Emilia Romagna Grand Prix?
The McLaren duo of Oscar Piastri and Lando Norris has led the way over all three practice sessions. Piastri topped the timing sheets in both FP1 and FP2 — with Norris right behind him in P2 — while it was Norris who was fastest earlier today in FP3, with Piastri behind him in second.
A major story to watch in today’s qualifying session is the soft C6 compound, which is being used for the first time this season at Imola. While drivers switched from the medium compound to the softs late in FP3, few improvements were found in lap times. The possible reason? The soft tires were overheating by the end of the lap, decreasing grip levels through the final few corners of the circuit.
That might change how teams approach their warmup laps during qualifying, which could increase the traffic we see during Q1.
It could be a chaotic qualifying session, and we will have it covered live for you here at SB Nation, from the start of Q1 through the session.
Note: Updates are all in Eastern time.
Pre-qualifying notes
9:55: McLaren CEO Zak Brown predicts that the top three in qualifying will be Lando Norris, Oscar Piastri, and Max Verstappen in some order. Take that for what it’s worth.
9:47: During the F1TV pre-qualifying show, Flavio Briatore talks with Lawrence Barretto about the switch from Jack Doohan to Franco Colapinto. Briatore brushes aside the idea that Colapinto just has five races in the car to prove himself at Alpine, stating that how long Colapinto lasts comes down to “performance.”
