Four-time world champion Max Verstappen smashed the track record to snatch pole position for Sunday’s Japanese Grand Prix ahead of McLaren’s Lando Norris, as Yuki Tsunoda qualified a lowly 15th in his Red Bull debut.<\/p>\n
Verstappen clocked a blistering lap of 1min 26.983sec in his Red Bull, 0.012sec ahead of championship leader Norris, with McLaren’s Oscar Piastri third.<\/p>\n
Verstappen set a new Suzuka track record with his final lap in Saturday’s qualifying, pipping Norris right at the death.<\/p>\n
“Each session we kept making little improvements, then the last lap was flat out,” said Verstappen, who has won the Japanese GP for the last three years.<\/p>\n
“In a Formula One car around here is insane. This is a proper highlight for us to be back on pole here.”<\/p>\n
It was Verstappen’s first pole position of the season, AFP reported.<\/p>\n
The Dutchman is still looking for his first grand prix win of the new campaign.<\/p>\n
Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc was fourth ahead of Mercedes’ George Russell, with Mercedes’ Kimi Antonelli sixth and RB’s Isack Hadjar seventh.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Four-time world champion Max Verstappen smashed the track record to snatch pole position for Sunday’s Japanese Grand Prix ahead of McLaren’s Lando Norris, as Yuki Tsunoda qualified a lowly 15th in his Red Bull debut. Verstappen clocked a blistering lap of 1min 26.983sec in his Red Bull, 0.012sec ahead of championship leader Norris, with McLaren’s …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":45868,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[21],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-45877","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sport"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45877","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=45877"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45877\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":45878,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45877\/revisions\/45878"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/45868"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=45877"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=45877"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=45877"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}