Charles Leclerc beats both McLarens to claim shock pole in Hungary

Charles Leclerc grabbed pole position in dramatic circumstances at the end of Saturday’s Qualifying session for the Hungarian Grand Prix, pulling a lap out of the bag to beat McLaren pair Oscar Piastri and Lando Norris.

After drops of rain in Q2, and with track conditions appearing to fall away, Leclerc produced a stunning time of 1m 15.372s on his final Q3 lap to overhaul previous session leaders Piastri and Norris by a matter of thousandths.

George Russell was another driver to impress amid dropping temperatures and rising wind levels, putting his Mercedes fourth, while Aston Martin built on their strong practice pace to take P5 and P6 with Fernando Alonso and Lance Stroll respectively.

Kick Sauber also had more reasons to celebrate with Gabriel Bortoleto’s run to seventh – the Brazilian’s final lap enough to beat reigning four-time World Champion Max Verstappen, who faced a tricky session aboard his Red Bull.

Following his points finish in Belgium last time out, Liam Lawson’s upward trajectory continued with a fine drive to ninth, just ahead of rookie team mate Isack Hadjar in what represented a double top-10 result for the Racing Bulls squad.

Lewis Hamilton was the biggest name to drop out in Q2 after another tough Qualifying run – the seven-time World Champion sighing “every time” on the radio as he ended up 12th, between Haas’ Ollie Bearman and Williams’ Carlos Sainz.

Kimi Antonelli experienced troubles of his own, having narrowly missed the Q3 cut in 11th and then lost a handful of places due to a deleted lap time for exceeding track limits. It leaves him 15th on the grid, just behind Alpine’s Franco Colapinto.

After a stronger weekend at Spa-Francorchamps, where he reached Q3, Yuki Tsunoda returned to dropping out in Q1 – the Japanese racer taking 16th position over the other Alpine and Haas machines of Pierre Gasly and Esteban Ocon respectively.

Nico Hulkenberg and Alex Albon sat above the Q1 drop zone following their initial Qualifying runs, but could not replicate the late-session gains of their Sauber and Williams team mates en route to the back row for Sunday’s Grand Prix.

By F1