Verstappen’s lap of the tight, 19-turn street circuit was 0.12 seconds faster than that of Russell, who has emerged as the leading Mercedes driver this weekend. Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc claimed the third-fastest time, while the McLaren duo of Oscar Piastri and Lando Norris locked out the fourth and fifth positions. Lewis Hamilton, despite showing early promise, could only manage sixth after a tactical decision to set his final qualifying lap early backfired. As the track surface evolved and grip levels increased in the closing moments of the session, Hamilton slid down the order from an initial second place, leaving him with significant work to do in the upcoming sprint race.
The qualifying session was not without controversy or technical drama. The FIA, Formula 1’s governing body, faced renewed scrutiny following a series of software and procedural errors that impacted the flow of the afternoon. These issues began with a glitch in the official timing system, which caused a delay to the start of the second segment of sprint qualifying. While this delay did not ultimately alter the competitive order, it added a layer of frustration to a weekend already shadowed by the memory of the software bugs that plagued the formation laps in Malaysia five days earlier. In that instance, cars were reduced to a "crawling speed" in wet conditions, a situation the FIA has been eager to avoid repeating.
However, a more complex issue arose during the first period of sprint qualifying following a red flag triggered by a crash involving Sergio Perez. Perez, driving for the Cadillac entry, lost control of his car, causing a stoppage that necessitated a reset of the session’s technical parameters. Under FIA protocols, the "overtake mode"—a setting that allows drivers to harvest and deploy an additional 0.5MJ of energy—is automatically disabled when a red flag is shown. Once the session is ready to resume, a prompt appears on the race control screens asking officials if they wish to re-enable the system.
According to a statement released by the FIA, this prompt was initially ignored due to human error. When officials realized the mistake, they reactivated the overtake mode, but then deactivated it again just 27 seconds later. The governing body explained that once it became clear the mode had not been active for the restart, they toggled it on briefly before deciding that leaving it enabled for only a portion of the field would be inherently unfair. Consequently, they opted to disable it entirely for the remainder of that specific segment. The FIA acknowledged that this "unfortunate human error" had a tangible impact on the performance of certain cars, depending on where they were on the track and the timing of their flying laps. While the second and third periods of qualifying were unaffected, the incident left several drivers complaining of a sudden and unexpected reduction in power during critical moments of their runs.
