Qualy: Verstappen grabs pole in chaotic wet-dry session

Max Verstappen took pole position for sprint qualifying at Imola, in a heavily interrupted session that saw five red flags in mixed conditions on Friday.

Wet-dry conditions played havoc throughout Friday’s running, but Charles Leclerc will line up alongside the Red Bull driver in Saturday’s sprint, with an unlikely second row featuring Lando Norris and Kevin Magnussen in behind them.

The Mercedes pair of Lewis Hamilton and George Russell were both knocked out in Q2, Carlos Sainz spun his Ferrari into the wall and a drawn-out affair eventually saw the World Champion take pole position for Saturday’s running.

Ferrari had dominated a wet FP1 session, which was the only hour the drivers had to get used to the circuit prior to qualifying, but the surface had dried up enough to allow the cars to run on dry or intermediate tyres from the start.

With new cars, little relevant data and no prior dry running, each driver’s setup will likely have been a gamble in its own right heading into qualifying.

It wasn’t long before everyone was out on slicks early on, despite a little bit of lingering moisture at a couple of corners.

Conclusions from #ImolaGP qualifying… #F1 pic.twitter.com/tU7vYFLKIC

— PlanetF1 (@Planet_F1) April 22, 2022

But one place moisture certainly wasn’t present was the rear-right of Alex Albon’s Williams, trundling back to his garage with his brake on fire – with debris also having been blown onto track with a small explosion in that area of the car.

Unsurprisingly, the first red flag was quickly out as a result.

Running started again around 10 minutes later, with the field picking up where they left off with more than half the session left to build confidence in variable conditions, and the lap times began to