Italian Grand Prix: Qualifying Recap

Qualifying got underway at 16:00 local around the historic 5.793-kilometer (3.6-mile), 11-turn Autodromo Nazionale Monza – with both drivers safely navigating their VF-25s through the first session. Utilizing three sets of new Pirelli P Zero Red soft tires, their third and final laps produced the fastest times, Bearman progressing through to Q2 courtesy of a 1:19.688 for P8 while Ocon recorded a 1:19.816 for P14.

The second phase of knockout qualifying began on used softs before the duo improved their times on a fresh set of red tires – Bearman narrowly missing out on the top 10 with a 1:19.446 to place P11 with Ocon classifying P15 at the checkered flag, posting a 1:19.707.

Pole position went to Red Bull Racing’s Max Verstappen (1:18.792) ahead of McLaren’s Lando Norris (1:18.869).

Ollie Bearman:

“I’m feeling pretty good. I’m happy with my lap, even though of course there’s always a little bit of time to be found when you look at it, but I was giving it everything out there. It’s more annoying to miss Q3 by such a small margin compared to a massive one, so that’s a shame, but it shows the good work we’ve been doing in the practice sessions because I didn’t expect to be fighting for Q3 today. We improved the car a lot yesterday so that’s great, and with regard to tomorrow, I have a good feeling also about that as the car felt great on high fuel.”

Esteban Ocon:

“It’s been a disappointing session overall. In Q1, it was a bit tricky as we didn’t have the right track position. In Q2 we didn’t maximize the whole lap, and the car just felt worse than in Q1. We struggled with front under rotation, front locking, and quite a lot of understeer in high-speed. Overall, it felt like a balance I had earlier in the year, so we need to work out what went wrong and hopefully tomorrow it won’t be the case. It won’t be easy – it will be tough into Turn 1 and 2 – but we’ll fight hard like we usually do.”

Ayao Komatsu, Team Principal:

“I think FP3 was a bit difficult, it wasn’t great. In qualifying though, I was happy with how we communicated and operated. With Ollie in P11, just losing out on getting into Q3 by one hundredth is a bit tough, but that’s where the competition is. Esteban struggled a bit more with the balance, so we need to look into that but considering we knew Monza wouldn’t be our strongest track, the fact we delivered P11 is something we should be happy with.”