Oscar Piastri held off the challenge of Max Verstappen to secure pole position for the Emilia Romagna Grand Prix. But there was disaster for the Tifosi in the stands at Imola who watched with horror as Charles Leclerc and Lewis Hamilton both failed to reach the top 10 for Ferrari.
Their best laps were good enough only for 11th and 12th places on the grid for Sunday’s race. And the other home hero, Mercedes teenager Kimi Antonelli, fared even worse by qualifying just 13th on the track he grew up just 20 miles away from.
It also wasn’t a great qualifying performance again from Lando Norris who couldn’t find his groove on his final run. He had to settle for fourth on the grid, bettered again by George Russell whose impressively consistent start to the season continues.
But it was Piastri again on pole edging out Verstappen despite making a mistake towards the end of his final effort. There were just three-hundredths of a second separating them when the dust settled, with Russell a further tenth back but Norris was more than three-tenths of the pace of his McLaren team-mate.
Qualifying began in dramatic fashion when Yuki Tsunoda lost control and crashed into a tyre barrier at high speed, the impact flipping his Red Bull. Fortunately, it landed the right way up again and the Japanese driver did not suffer any lasting damage.
But it did mean he would end Q1 at the bottom of the timesheets having not completed a flying lap. So just four of the 19 still competing when qualifying resumed after around 15 minutes would be left disappointed at the end of that first part of the session.
Franco Colapinto also wasn’t too pleased when, with no time left on the clock, he crashed his Alpine to bring a premature end to the session. He was 14th on the timesheets at the time but wouldn’t be able to compete in Q2.
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And the timing of the crash left Oliver Bearman, Esteban Ocon, Nico Hulkenberg and Liam Lawson in the bottom five. But Bearman was highly frustrated, believing that he had completed the lap he was on before the red flags came out, which would have been good enough for a place in Q2.
It took more than 10 minutes for race control to settle the matter, delaying the start of Q2 again. But the locals were left wishing it hadn’t resumed when they saw who had been eliminated at the end of it.
Leclerc and Hamilton were eighth and ninth with three cars still to finish their final flying laps. Pierre Gasly and the two Aston Martin cars all went quicker, meaning a stunning double Ferrari elimination condemning Leclerc to 11th on the grid and Hamilton to 12th, while Bologna-born home hero Antonelli was also only 13th fastest in the Mercedes.
Piastri took pole from Verstappen with Russell ahead of Norris on the second row. Fernando Alonso produced by far his best qualifying result of the year to go fifth fastest with Aston Martin’s upgrades clearly working a treat, as Lance Stroll was also in the top 10.
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