F1 Imola GP live commentary and updates - Qualifying
Updates from qualifying at the Emilia Romagna Grand Prix
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A look at the onboards from Colapinto's car suggests a misunderstanding between him and the first mechanic signalling him out of the garage.
He will likely get a grid penalty - but if the stewards are feeling tetchy he might have to do community service or do the cup-stacking competition again.
Max Verstappen, Red Bull Racing, Pierre Gasly, Alpine, Yuki Tsunoda, Red Bull Racing Team, Franco Colapinto, Alpine
Photo by: Sam Bloxham / Motorsport Images via Getty Images
Just to confirm: Verstappen, Norris, Piastri, Antonelli, Hadjar, Russell, Lawson, Gasly, Colapinto are yet to set a time. Tsunoda too, but that is academic right now.
He can always go back to stacking cups...
Yuki Tsunoda, Red Bull Racing Team
Photo by: Sam Bagnall / Motorsport Images via Getty Images
Qualifying is about to restart. There will be a stewards' intervention because Franco Colapinto was released into the pitlane before this message was given.
We'll get a picture of what's left of the car as soon as we can and you can follow the developing story of what comes next. It's looking very second-hand - Red Bull may have to build another one out of a spare tub.
12m13s left on the clock (which remains stopped) and only 10 drivers have set a lap time. Unfortunate too for Max Verstappen since he was embarking on a push lap at the critical point and those C6s are unlikely to have another fast one in them.
The magnitude of the impact triggered a medical car deplooyment and it is on the scene, but we can confirm that Tsunoda exited the cockpit under his own steam and walked away from his car.
Now we get it. It was indeed a big one. Looks like Tsunoda's car was bouncing on the way into the corner, got even more unsettled as he rode the kerb at the apex of the left-hander, then snapped sideways.
Momentum carried the RB21 sideways and it hit the barrier rear-right corner first, which snapped it back round again and caused it to invert, riding over the top of the barrier and bouncing off the catch fencing while upside down. Yuki is lucky to walk away from that.
DRAPEAU ROUGE
We're yet to see a replay but that was obviously a big shunt for Tsunoda.
Verstappen out as I type and purple in sector one - but he has to abort the lap because his teammate has binned it at the Villeneuve corner.
Alex Albon fastest so far on 1m16.164s but we haven't seen the McLarens or Max Verstappen yet.
We get an in-car shot of Lewis Hamilton's Ferrari and the back end of the SF-25 is all over the place as he threads his way through the Tosa hairpin. And that's just on the first push lap on the C6!
Lewis Hamilton, Ferrari
Photo by: Peter Fox / Getty Images
Q1 IS GO!
And the cars are filtering out onto the track, all on the soft tyre so far. It looks like the track has been ramping up in terms of evolution so the fastest times may come at the end of each segment - but, given the narrowness of this circuit, traffic may make it difficult to set a lap at that point because everybody will be trying to do the same thing.
COLA US CURIOUS
Many eyes will be on Franco Colapinto in this session, his first qualifying since last season's Abu Dhabi GP. We were amused/befuddled this week when Alpine 'executive adviser' Flavio Briatore claimed that the whole idea of Colapinto having five races to prove himself was bunkum - contradicting his own team's official announcement...
Franco Colapinto, Alpine
Photo by: Steven Tee / LAT Images via Getty Images
Among the hot topics this weekend has been Pirelli's new soft-compound C6 tyre. Signs are that it doesn't offer that much more meaningful grip here than the medium (C5, previously the softest on the menu) because it's so tricky to make it last over a single lap.
That's particularly disturbing because Pirelli has been hoping it could deploy the C6 more often than planned in order to facilitate more strategic variation.
The aim is to nudge teams towards two-stop races with more variety over who stops when, and which tyres they use. That won't happen if F1 simply mandates two stops (as is happening in Monaco next weekend), since in those circumstances most people would stop at the same time.
WELCOME BACK TO IMOLA
We're just moments away from qualifying here at the Autodromo Enzo e Dino Ferrari. There will be complaints about traffic, complaints about tyres - and, later, complaints about complaints!
McLaren has been fastest in all three track sessions so far - Oscar Piastri in FP1 and FP2, Lando Norris in FP3 - but we know the gap narrows to the rest of the field on one-lap pace.
Lando Norris, McLaren
Photo by: Lars Baron / Motorsport Images via Getty Images
By: Stuart Codling
