Piastri on Sao Paulo sprint pole ahead of Norris

Oscar Piastri led Lando Norris to a McLaren one-two in sprint qualifying at the Sao Paulo Grand Prix.

Norris’ title rival Max Verstappen could manage only fourth place in the Red Bull, behind Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc.

Verstappen, who has a five-place grid penalty for the main grand prix on Sunday, starts the weekend 47 points ahead of Norris in the championship.

The result of sprint qualifying gives Norris an opportunity to claw back a small amount of points on Verstappen in Saturday’s sprint event, in which there are eight points for a win, seven for second and so on down to eighth.

Ferrari’s Carlos Sainz qualified fifth for the sprint, ahead of Mercedes’ George Russell.

The second Mercedes of Lewis Hamilton was knocked out in the second session and will start the sprint 11th.

Verstappen’s team-mate Sergio Perez suffered the same fate, in 13th.

Piastri secured pole by employing an alternate tyre strategy from Norris as McLaren had a decisive edge over the rest of the field.

Norris chose new tyres for his first run and set the pace with a one minute 8.928 seconds lap, with the Australian just under 0.3secs slower on used tyres.

Norris’ second run was on the same set of tyres, which now had three laps of usage on them, while Piastri switched to a new set.

Piastri edged out Norris by just 0.029secs, while the Briton was not able to improve.

Verstappen was 0.320secs adrift in fourth place, and just 0.056secs slower than Leclerc.