The first event of the day was the Sprint Shootout - or qualifying for the sprint. The biggest ask for the drivers was not to damage the car as there was almost no time between the qualifying and race to fix it and, because the engineers will be busy with the sprint race, then less time to fix the car before the main race on Sunday.
It's a shame the FIA didn't go for an old-skool one hour long "see what you can do?" session. There was a step towards this by limiting cars to one tyre for the whole session, so drivers stayed out for the whole session. Everyone managed to get through cleanly apart from Sargeant for Williams, who had the biggest wall-smash of the weekend. If it was going to be anyone....He was also particularly slow in bringing his car to a stop. With 25 seconds to go, the Red Flag meant the session was over. With Sargeant actually through to Q2, there would be a free pass for someone to go through to Q3! Both Alfa Romeos were out along with Tsunoda, Gasly (abysmal weekend so far) and De Vries.
With a few Yellow Flags, Sainz taking a trip off the track, we got through the second qualifying session without any Red Flags, which feels like all the drivers are making progress. Piastri, Ocon and both Haas were out along with Sargeant and Albon made it through, showing that there is promise in the Williams car, they just need to pick a second driver who is as good as Albon or better.
Norris didn't have any soft tyres to participate in the final Qualifying session. Somehow LeClerc went straight into the wall and still managed to keep his pole position ahead of Perez then Verstappen. I don't know why the Red Flag wasn't out. Russell managed 4th ahead of his team mate Hamilton in 6th. Sainz was 5th and affected by his team mates crash. Then Albon in the Williams, at last showing the pace promised. Next the Aston Martins, who were suffering from a fault with the DRS opening of their wing, which would seriously hamper their progress up the grid and leadership boards.
There were questions whether his car could be fixed in time for the sprint race.
On after the Sprint Qualifying or Squint as I shall now be calling it, we moved on to the race.
Sargeant was not going to be able to race as his car couldn't be fixed, which could have cost Williams badly if they show strong.
It was a clean start, narrowly, I hadn't noticed how tight the corner was and close to a wall the track run off the start line. Russell was passed Verstappen, who was very unhappy about it. Then we saw a tyre rolling down the track; was it LeClerc with typical bad luck? No Tsunoda. A Virtual Safety Car was called for. Then a Safety Car. And the laps ticked away. When they restarted, a few people were able to overtake the car ahead of them. If you're Alonso, that was two cars. Really it didn't take long for Perez to take the lead from LeClerc. It didn't bode well for the main race.
Post-race, Verstappen was very unhappy with Russell leading to apologies for "language" and a slight storming off.
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