Brazilian GP Rain Sends Nine Different Teams Into Q3 for First Time Since 2009

Rain hit Interlagos on Saturday and scrambled Formula 1’s usual order so badly that nine different teams made Q3 in the Brazilian GP qualifying. This hasn’t happened since the 2009 race at the same track. Up front, Lando Norris sealed his third consecutive pole position at Interlagos for McLaren, while Racing Bulls, Audi, Haas, Aston Martin and Williams all pushed their way into the top 10.

For several of those midfield teams, the rain was the whole plan. “We usually go well in these conditions, and we needed the rain today,” said Alex Albon, who made it all the way to Q3 for the first time this year. Fernando Alonso did the same for Aston Martin and admitted that “the first Q3 of the season feels good.”

The nine teams that made it into the top 10 include McLaren, Mercedes, Ferrari, Racing Bulls, Audi, Red Bull, Haas, Aston Martin and Williams. Alpine and Cadillac were the only teams left out, and Colapinto, Gasly, Stroll, Bottas, Perez and Bortoleto all went out in Q1.

The starting grid for Sunday tells a slightly different story, though: Charles Leclerc drops 10 places from 4th to P14 after taking a new ICE, so Sunday’s top 10 will hold just eight teams.

A Soaked, Stop-Start Saturday

Trouble came almost at once. The session was red-flagged less than three minutes in, and Antonelli and Hadjar complained of soaked race suits after brief runs. The suspension lasted more than 80 minutes.

The switch to intermediate tires in Q2 opened the door for the midfield. Liam Lawson moved into first, 1.6s clear of Bearman, and Q3 turned into a race against the next shower. Norris played it best: “It was about getting two laps in at the beginning and not making any mistakes,” he said.

Lawson finished fifth and is due to start the race from third on the grid after penalties for George Russell and Leclerc. Still, he wasn’t fully happy. “I had to back off on my final push lap,” he said after catching Alonso, before telling reporters, “I didn’t qualify third. I qualified fifth.”

Nico Hulkenberg put Audi sixth, which is the team’s best qualifying performance to date. “The key was to keep it clean in very tricky conditions,” the German said. Isack Hadjar placed seventh for Red Bull and felt he could have fought “for a top-three position”, while Oliver Bearman put it bluntly after taking eighth for Haas: “As soon as the rain came, it was game over.”

Echoes of 2009 Brazilian GP

The last time this happened, Rubens Barrichello won the pole position for his hometown Brazilian Grand Prix. That session lasted nearly three hours in total thanks to a string of rain-induced delays, and Q3 featured drivers from nine of the ten teams, the only exclusion being McLaren.

There’s a neat twist this time around. McLaren, the one team missing in 2009, now sits on pole, and with 11 teams on the grid, getting nine into Q3 is arguably even harder.

Ferrari, at least, saw this coming. Team Principal Frederic Vasseur said the team decided to take the penalties here with both drivers because it believes Interlagos offers a real chance to move up the order, and Leclerc admitted they “were willing to be more experimental.”

Now everything depends on the sky on Sunday. Albon said that “it looks like tomorrow we may have more of the same rain”, but Alonso didn’t oversell his big day. If Sunday stays dry, he said, “If not, I think we will go back to our natural position.”

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