Tricky Sprint Qualifying in São Paulo

Sprint Qualifying took place in cool and windy conditions at Interlagos. Both drivers made it through to SQ2 where Lewis was unfortunate to be eliminated, just 0.097s from making SQ3.

George progressed through to the final part of the session; his one run on the mandatory Soft tyre put him sixth, half a second behind pole sitter Oscar Piastri.

The penultimate Sprint of the season takes place tomorrow at 11:00 local time / 14:00 GMT.

George Russell

That was a challenging session as the track cooled through Sprint Qualifying. Finishing P6 is reflective of where we are right now, at the back of the front pack of teams, and with a pace delta to the next group behind us. I enjoy the challenge of Sprint weekends, getting straight into the action, and of course today has also brought the slightly unexpected challenge of a very bumpy track – which obviously is the same for everyone. For tomorrow, I will be looking to move forward and using the Sprint to work out where we can improve the car for qualifying and the Grand Prix on Sunday.

Lewis Hamilton

It has been a difficult day for me – notwithstanding the incredible support from the amazing fans here in Brazil. I think the ride on the bumpy surface has been pretty bad for everyone, and it made FP1 very challenging inside the cockpit. We lifted the car during the break and improved the situation, but the pace simply wasn’t there when it came to the timed laps – the balance is on a knife edge, and the car just so tricky to drive and I couldn’t attack any of the corners as I wanted to. I hope we can move forward from P11 during the Sprint and keep working to figure out how to find the sweet spot of the balance in qualifying tomorrow afternoon.

Andrew Shovlin, Trackside Engineering Director

It has been a challenging day for us in Interlagos. Running in very warm conditions in FP1, it quickly became clear that the resurfaced track was as bumpy as ever, and that this would provide us with a set-up challenge for the weekend. Both drivers completed decent long runs, and we made relatively small changes going into Sprint Qualifying. Once we began running, it became clear that neither George nor Lewis were completely happy with the balance, suffering with snaps at the rear. This cost Lewis confidence and lap time, and saw him knocked out of SQ2 by less than 0.1s. George was able to reach SQ3, eventually taking P6 but with a substantial gap to Piastri on pole. The Sprint tomorrow is going to be useful to learn about the long run balance ahead of qualifying in the afternoon. It’s normally a good circuit for overtaking so if we have pace, there’s every opportunity for both drivers to move forward.

2024 São Paulo GP Sprint Qualifying Result

2024 São Paulo GP FP1 Result