McLaren driver Oscar Piastre will start from pole position in the sprint race of the Qatar Grand Prix Formula 1 race, after being fastest in today's qualifying session. The sprint race is tomorrow at 15pm, the Grand Prix on Sunday at 17pm.
Piastre took pole position in the final moments of qualifying from Mercedes driver George Russell. Piastre set a time of 1:20,055 minutes. Russell was 0,032 seconds slower.
McLaren's Lando Norris, who is 0,230 seconds behind his teammate, will start from third position. Aston Martin's Fernando Alonso was fourth, while Red Bull's Yuki Tsunoda and reigning champion Max Verstappen took fifth and sixth places.
Cunoda was ahead of Verstappen for the first time until he joined Red Bull.
And what does it take for who to win the title in the last two races, Qatar and Abu Dhabi on December 7?
Norris leads with 390 points, Piastre and four-time champion Verstappen have 24 fewer.
The remaining two Grand Prix will consist of a sprint (8 points for victory, 7-6-5-4-3-2-1 for second to eighth place) and two races (each with 25-18-15 points for first to third place and 12-10-8-6-4-2-1 for fourth to tenth place).
Since Norris is 24 points ahead of Piastrzy and has the same number of points ahead of Verstappen, he only needs to finish on the podium (even third place) in both remaining races, and be fourth in the sprint to become world champion.
Verstappen and Piastre need to win to win the championship and hope that Norris doesn't finish on the podium. Or that they hope that Norris doesn't score points in one of the races - for example, because he retires. If Norris fails to score points at the Qatar Grand Prix, Verstappen or Piastre could take the lead in the F1 World Championship as early as this weekend.
In the event of a tie, first places will count (Norris and Piastres each have seven, while Verstappen currently has six). If there is also an equal number of wins, second places, third places and so on will count. Norris has a significant advantage in the second places (nine, which is the total of the remaining two.
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