Title contender Lewis Hamilton overcome a nasty crash during his final practice for the Spanish Grand Prix to qualify fourth-fastest on the grid for Sunday’s race.
The seven-times world champion locked up and went into the barriers at the final corner during the final practice session on Saturday evening.
Hamilton sits in his car during qualifying. Getty Images
Hamilton managed to reverse out and tried to get the damaged Ferrari back to the pit lane, virtually a whole lap, while ignoring team instructions to stop.
The Briton eventually did pull over, with the front wing still wedged under the car which also had a punctured front right tyre.
“Stop the car. Stop in the safest place possible,” he had been told earlier.
“If I can make it back I will. If not, I will do it safely,” replied Hamilton, who returned to the pits on the back of a moped after parking up.
The session was red-flagged and the clock then temporarily stopped for barrier repairs with 15 minutes to go.
When it re-started, Antonelli knocked Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc off the top of the timesheets with a time of one minute and 32.797 seconds, 0.166 quicker.
Haas’s Bearman then brought out the red flags again in the final minute when he spun and hit the barriers backwards at Turn 11, the approach to La Monumental, the circuit’s banked signature curve.
The young Englishman failed to return for qualifying.
It was reigning world champion Lando Norris who claimed pole position in that session, producing a wonder lap out of nowhere to leave his rivals stunned.
Norris came in just 0.011 of a second faster than Antonelli to secure his spot in the front row, with Max Verstappen third fastest for Red Bull and Hamilton fourth.
“I’m shocked. I’m a little bit surprised to be here now,” exclaimed Norris in his first comments to the crowd after getting out of the car.
Norris celebrates getting pole position. Getty Images
“It was probably one of the best laps I’ve done ever in my career.
“It was just one of those laps where everything came together
“I had a good idea of what I wanted to do but it was whether my brain let me do it on the last lap and everything pretty much worked perfectly.”
Norris clocked 1:31.824, with Antonelli on 1:31.835. It was the champion’s 19th career pole and third of the season.
Norris had been only sixth after the first flying laps of the final phase, when Hamilton set the pace and appeared to be heading for his first pole since 2023, and was only fifth and seventh respectively in the previous two phases.
Antonelli then went fastest, with the Mercedes first out of the pit lane for the final effort, but Norris secured the top slot when it mattered most.
“It was one of those laps where you look at the lap time at the end and you’re like ’oh shit, that was pretty good,” he added.
Leclerc qualified fifth with Mercedes’s George Russell, Antonelli’s closest rival but 66 points behind after 13 rounds, sixth.
McLaren’s Oscar Piastri was seventh, ahead of Red Bull’s Liam Lawson and Alpine’s Franco Colapinto, with Racing Bulls rookie Arvid Lindblad completing the top 10.
Spanish drivers Carlos Sainz (Williams) and Fernando Alonso (Aston Martin) will also start towards the back on Sunday, in 17th and 18th respectively.