How Max Verstappen edged past Oscar Piastri in the F1 Sprint Shootout at the Belgian Grand Prix

For the second day in a row, a qualifying session at the Belgian Grand Prix came right down to the wire, and for the second day in a row it was Max Verstappen who did enough at the end to take the top spot.

Only in Saturday’s F1 Shootout, it was just a matter of inches.

In Friday’s qualifying session for the Belgian Grand Prix, Verstappen edged out Charles Leclerc by 0.820 seconds at the very end of Q3. That gave Verstappen his eighth pole position of the season. However, since Verstappen is facing a five-place grid penalty for the team fitting his RB19 with the fifth gearbox of the season, Verstappen will roll off the line in sixth on Sunday, with Leclerc starting up front.

Things were much closer on Saturday.

In the F1 Sprint Shootout session, Verstappen again captured pole at the death, this time over Oscar Piastri of McLaren. Just how close was the finish?

We can let McLaren’s social media team tell that story:

Verstappen finished just 0.011 seconds ahead of Piastri, enough to secure pole for the F1 Sprint race later in the day:

What truly stands out about this finish is exactly how Verstappen made up the ground. Looking at telemetry data from F1-Tempo, you can compare the final laps from the two drivers. As you might expect, Verstappen was faster in the first section, getting to to speed through Eau Rouge and down the Kemmel Straight. Piastri, however, picked things up in the second section, with turns such as Bruxelles, Pouhon, and Campus. This graphic from F1-Tempo shows which driver was fastest on each part of the circuit on those final two laps, with Verstappen in blue and Piastri in orange:

Now let’s look at the delta between the two drivers:

Verstappen is in blue again, with Piastri in orange. As you can see over the first half of the lap, or maybe a little more, Piastri is lagging behind Verstappen. But he manages to catch him near the end of the second sector, and then has the advantage over Verstappen through the third sector, which you can see as the orange line dips below Verstappen’s blue line, showing that Piastri is ahead.

Where does Verstappen manage to grab pole? On that final little straight:

That moment correlates with this section of the track, indicated by the big white dot just ahead of the start/finish line:

The RB19 has been so strong on straights this season, and Verstappen needed just about every inch of that last little straight to nip Piastri for pole Saturday.