George Russell secured pole position in Melbourne after Max Verstappen’s dramatic crash removed the four-time champion from contention. French driver Hadjar said he was surprised to qualify third, having expected Ferrari to be ahead of him, but on his debut for the Red Bull team he did what many before him could not and capitalised when Verstappen hit trouble.
Verstappen spun off and crashed at Turn One on his opening lap of the session when his rear axle locked, an issue that clearly caught him off guard. He was shaking his hands after climbing out because he had gripped the steering wheel during the impact, but he confirmed nothing was broken.
“I have no idea (what happened),” he said. “I just arrived to Turn One and the rear axle just completely locked up out of the blue while hitting the pedal, so this is something very weird that I’ve never experienced in F1 before. So just need to understand what went wrong.”
He will start 20th, ahead only of the Williams of Carlos Sainz and the Aston Martin of Lance Stroll, neither of whom were able to take part in the session after reliability problems in final practice.
Behind the Racing Bulls, the new Audi entry enjoyed a solid qualifying with Gabriel Bortoleto and Nico Hülkenberg 10th and 11th. The Haas cars of Oliver Bearman and Esteban Ocon followed in 12th and 13th. Bortoleto missed a chance to start even higher after his car broke down on the way back to the pits following the second knockout session.
Fernando Alonso also highlighted how much progress his team made: after being around five seconds off the pace on Friday, completing laps in practice and qualifying shrank that gap to roughly 2.5 seconds.
