Formula 1 News: Piastri wins important pole for the 2025 Qatar GP

Driving the Superior #81 McLaren, Oscar Piastri (pictured) turned a lap of 1m19.387s to win the all-important pole position for the 2025 Lusail GP Formula 1 race on the difficult to pass Lusail International Circuit.

–by Mark Cipolloni–

With the championship on the line, Piastri is keeping his championship hopes alive and needs to finish in front of #4 Lando Norris who is driving the other superior McLaren. The two Rob Marshall designed McLaren’s were so much faster than all the other cars, no one else has a chance on Sunday.

Norris will start 2nd for a McLaren 1-2, 0.108s behind Piastri. On his last run Norris attacked Turn 1, but into Turn 2 he got the smallest of twitches and had to back out mid-corner. That was enough for Norris to know he could not improve and so he backed out…. Only to not have enough time to make it back round ahead of the checkered flag.

Max Verstappen’s championship hopes are essentially over.  He will start 3rd for Red Bull, 0.264s behind Piastri. Yuki Tsunoda in the other Red Bull RB21 will start way back in 14th, underscoring just what a dog the RB21 is.

George Russell will start 4th for Mercedes, 0.275s behind Piastri

Kimi Antonelli rounded out the top-5 for Mercedes, 0.459s behind Piastri

Isack Hadjar will start 6th for Racing Bulls, ahead of Carlos Sainz, Fernando Alonso, Pierre Gasly and Charles Leclerc rounded out the top-10. Leclerc had a big spin but never hit anything.

“We left it pretty much the same, very few minor tweaks here and there. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it! The team did a very good job,” said pole-sitter Piastri.

“Very happy. Pretty tough [tomorrow] with the two-stops, we’ll be pushing flat out the whole time. I’m expecting a pretty tough race, it will be hard work.”

Norris says he “doesn’t know” what happened on his last lap, he got some understeer and had to abort. “Nothing to complain about, just didn’t do the lap,” he continues.

“This Qualifying was a little bit better, even if we are still quite far off,” added Verstappen. “At least we are P3, starting on the second row – it creates better opportunities. Realistically, it is a bit tough. This weekend has not been what I wanted it to be so far.”

Piastri agreed tomorrow is win or bust. If Norris gets ahead at the start and wins tomorrow, he is World Champion.

If Verstappen wants to keep his hopes alive, he needs to finish ahead of Norris.

As it stands, if they finish in their starting positions, Norris would have a 15-point lead to take to Abu Dhabi in a two-car race into the final Grand Prix of the season, with Verstappen bowing out of the fight.

2025 Qatar GP Qualifying Results