F1 Sprint Qualifying Results: Ferrari fumble as McLaren snatch Miami pole

Lando Norris took a brilliant pole position for Saturday's sprint race at the Miami Grand Prix, beating championship leader Kimi Antonelli into second place.

Oscar Piastri and Charles Leclerc will start from the second row after the latter had a scruffy moment on his hot lap, with Max Verstappen leading George Russell right behind them.

Lewis Hamilton, who set faster times than both Mercedes drivers in SQ1 and SQ2, had a big moment at Turn 17 to ruin a promising lap and qualify all the way down in seventh.

The upgrade packages brought to the race by McLaren and Ferrari appear to have put them right back into the battle with the previously dominant Silver Arrows (despite a scruffy SQ3 from both Ferrari drivers), putting the championship fight right back in the cards.

As has become de rigueur, the last four cars on the grid will be the two Aston Martins and the two Cadillacs. They were joined in their early exits by Liam Lawson and Esteban Ocon.

An utterly bizarre situation followed, with Lawson heading back to the garage from the weighbridge before putting his helmet back on and climbing into his car – only to just sit there in apparent readiness to take to the track despite his elimination. At no point did he leave the garage during SQ2.

Update: Lawson and Racing Bulls were waiting for the results of an investigation into Alex Albon potentially getting his lap time deleted for exceeding track limits, which could have allowed him into SQ2. That investigation did not conclude until hours after the session, but did result in Albon's lap time being deleted and the Williams driver dropping from 14th to 19th.

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Miami Grand Prix Sprint Qualifying Results

*Albon originally made it into SQ2 and qualified 14th, but he was retroactively eliminated in SQ1 after his lap time was deleted hours after the session and moved down to where his best legal lap seen him rank.

Changes to F1 qualifying in 2026

There are a couple of changes to the way qualifying works this year, not quite as sweeping as the new technical regulations.

Firstly we now have 22 cars on the grid, so instead of 5 cars exiting after SQ1 and SQ2, we will have 6 being eliminated. That still leaves 10 for the pole shootout in SQ3.

Unlike in grand prix qualifying, where Q3 now gets an extra minute and lasts for 13 rather than 12, sprint qualifying timings are unchanged (12 minutes for SQ1, 10 for SQ2, eight for SQ3).

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Chris Deeley - Editor

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