The result gives the world champion pole position for the start of the main race on Sunday, and reduces his deficit in the championship to 45 points. Verstappen started the sprint from pole but lost the lead at the start. Perez closed up quickly on Leclerc in the final laps to finish just 1.7 seconds behind the championship leader. Leclerc blamed too much tyre consumption for his loss of pace in the final part of the race. Verstappen said: “I don’t know what happened at the start, it was just really bad. “With other tyre compounds coming into place tomorrow, it might look a bit different.”. Leclerc said: “It is still a front-row start, we struggled with the tyres at the end, so we need to analyse that for tomorrow.

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