Verstappen on pole ahead of Leclerc, Sainz in Miami GP
MIAMI -- Max Verstappen secured pole position for Sunday's Miami Grand Prix after beating Ferrari's Charles Leclerc to the fastest lap in Saturday's qualifying session.
The Red Bull driver held a 0.141s advantage over Leclerc at the end of Q3, with Carlos Sainz third fastest in the second Ferrari.
The front row mirrors the result of sprint qualifying, which led to Verstappen beating Leclerc to victory in the 19-lap sprint race.
As he has done throughout the season, Verstappen appeared unbeatable despite struggling with the balance of the weekend. His run of six consecutive poles at the start of the season puts him level with Alain Prost's record, who achieved the feat in 1993.
The Dutchman said afterward: "I think we've definitely improved the car a bit. I don't know what it is here, every year we come here I find it extremely difficult to be very consistent with the tyre feeling, the car feeling over one lap. It's just super hard to make sure sector one feels good and sector three to make that happen together is incredibly tough and again today."
He added: "It's not the most enjoyable lap of my career, just because of how it is, and you're not very confident in the lap but we are on pole and that's the most important."
Similarly, Leclerc said consistency between the sectors was difficult. "It felt so much on the limit," he said. "Obviously it was very close until Q3 when we started to push for the last one or two tenths. We started to lose the tyres in sector two and three overheating them quite a bit. Sector one was actually feeling really good, but then sector two was losing too much so today we lost a bit of time.
"But tomorrow the race is long and this morning [in the sprint] we showed a good pace so I hope tomorrow we can put Max under a bit more pressure."
Verstappen's Red Bull teammate Sergio Pérez missed out on the second row by 0.005s behind Sainz and will line up fourth on the grid ahead of McLaren drivers Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri.
Sainz said: "I knew that in qualifying I could be in the top three and we managed to do some clean laps -- which is really tricky around here with the new soft [tyre]. Every lap is a bit of adventure with the wind, you don't know what's going to happen and keeping all this in mind it wasn't too bad.
"You always finish a lap feeling like you could've gone so much faster having a cleaner lap, but it's almost impossible having a clean lap around here, as there's always one place you slide, overheat the tyre, where the wind hits you different and you start struggling so it's a very tricky balance."
George Russell was seventh fastest for Mercedes ahead of teammate Lewis Hamilton in eighth, Haas driver Nico Hülkenberg in ninth and RB's Yuki Tsunoda in 10th.
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Aston Martin's Lance Stroll was 0.022s off a place in Q3 and will start 11th ahead of the two Alpines of Pierre Gasly and Esteban Ocon. Alex Albon secured 14th for Williams ahead of Fernando Alonso, who will start from 15th -- his worst qualifying result of the season.
Valtteri Bottas missed out on a place in Q2 by 0.010s and will start 16th on the gird ahead of American driver Logan Sargeant.
Daniel Ricciardo, who finished fourth in Saturday's sprint race earlier in the day, was 0.164s off a place in Q2 and will line up 18th on the grid for the grand prix.
Kevin Magnussen was 19th fastest ahead of Zhou Guanyu, who will start from last place for Sauber on Sunday.
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