Leclerc said he had the pace to take pole position but felt in the final session that he did not reach his full potential.
“It's a little disappointing,” he said. “We found a sweet spot in qualifying. We qualified pretty well and are in a better position than we were a year ago, so that's good. We'll have to see what the race pace is tomorrow.”
“In Q2 I clocked 29.1 seconds, which was about the same time as Max in Q3, but I lost a bit of rhythm with the used tires at the start of Q3.
“We really think Red Bull is still quite ahead in the race, but we'll see tomorrow.”
Perez entered the season under pressure from Red Bull to improve his qualifying performance or risk losing his seat.
The Mexican did not get off to a good start and fell to fifth place, 0.358 seconds behind pole-sitter Verstappen.
Norris' McLaren was faster at various points during the session, but ended up finishing 0.435 seconds from pole position, just 0.069 seconds behind teammate Oscar Piastri.
The British rider believed he could have made it to the front row but was left disappointed by a mistake-strewn final lap.
“We've ruined Sector 1,” he said. “As soon as I started stepping on the accelerator at the exit of Turn 1, I oversteered a little bit and lost 0.15 seconds, but today the difference between me and second place was 0.15 seconds.
“I felt like I wanted to push a little bit more but it was the wrong thing to do. I made a couple more mistakes in Turn 4. I would have been there or there. The car was good enough to be in the front row. But I'm disappointed that I wasn't able to achieve that.''It's a little disappointing, but I'll try to make up for it tomorrow. ”
Hamilton described his session as “poor” and said he sacrificed his qualifying pace to improve the performance of his tires in the race.
“Yesterday, George and I had the exact same car set-up and the car felt great and then we went off the track,” Hamilton said. “He went one way and I went the other. The one I was riding wasn't good for one lap. I hope for a good result in the race.”
“I wasn't satisfied with my race pace, so I changed the car to improve my race pace, but we'll find out tomorrow if that's true. There's been a lot of deterioration in the rear (tires), so my race pace is quite low. Everything other than location is also important.
“The factory finally gave us a car to compete with, but we didn't take advantage of it today. It's unbelievable that George was able to get Red Bull by 0.3 seconds. “Here's our platform. If you have, you can really follow the rest of the season. ”
Following Hamilton, Hulkenberg was the last driver to finish in the top 10.
The most disappointing performance at the back was Alpine's performance. The French team, which finished sixth overall in 2023, occupy the last row of the grid, with Esteban Ocon ahead of Pierre Gasly.
Ocon was thrilled, and when he returned to the pits he sent a radio message saying he had “confidence” in his team.
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