Saturday, December 11th, 2021
Vettel and Schumacher in the back
Verstappen terrifies Hamilton violently
Sebastian Vettel and Mick Schumacher only play supporting roles in the last qualification of the Formula 1 season. At the top, Max Verstappen and Lewis Hamilton continue their incredibly exciting fight for the world championship.
With an outstanding lap, Max Verstappen secured pole position for the season finale of Formula 1. The world championship leader burned a best time of 1: 22.109 minutes in the floodlit underground of Abu Dhabi, making the Red Bull driver clearly the fastest in the field Qualifying. Lewis Hamilton tries in vain to match or even undercut the Dutchman’s time. The seven-time champion remains 0.371 seconds behind Verstappen in the Mercedes and starts the race from second place. If Hamilton wants to win the title for the eighth time, he has to cross the finish line tomorrow before the Dutchman.
Already in the second section it becomes clear that Red Bull and Mercedes are using different strategies for the race on Sunday (2 p.m. / Sky and in the live ticker at ntv.de). While Lewis Hamilton and Valtteri Bottas will start the season finale on the yellow medium tires, Max Verstappen and Sergio Pérez will qualify on the red softs. That should give them better traction at the start.
For Sebastian Vettel, Saturday is over once again before the best starting positions are awarded. On the track where he sensationally clinched the first of his four consecutive World Championship titles in 2010, he is only 14th this time he is defeated in the Aston Martin internal duel against Lance Stroll, who offers at least the twelfth fastest time.
Unfortunately, Mick Schumacher was unable to grant the Haas social media team a big wish early on in the final qualifying. In 19th place, he lacks almost half a second to reach the second section at the end of Q1. Haas had requested via Twitter for 2022 “to type P19 and P20 much less frequently” – at the end of the 2021 season, however, the fact that the cars of the US racing team are undoubtedly the slowest in the field. In 20th place, Nikita Mazepin is 0.8 seconds behind Schumacher. The German, on the other hand, is in the 22nd qualification of the year for the 19th time ahead of his Russian team-mate.