Fortune favored the brave, as from the dark and damp of Interlagos, Kevin Magnussen broke through and took an outstanding pole position in the sprint for the São Paulo Grand Prix, the first of his career and the first for his Haas team.
This weekend’s sprint format means Magnussen will not necessarily be at the front of the grid for Sunday’s Grand Prix. He will start at the front for Saturday’s 24-lap race, and will surely struggle to hold off second-placed Max Verstappen.
Still, it was a great moment for the Danish driver. Dropped by Haas at the end of 2020, Magnussen was dropped by the team at the start of this season, to replace Russian driver Nikita Mazepin after the invasion of Ukraine.
Magnussen has stepped up as if he had never been away, and after 139 meetings he finally has pole position. He and the team celebrated with gleeful abandon as Haas also claimed his first since entering the sport in 2016.
They have 143 races behind them and this moment will live long in the memory, finally erasing their record for the longest run as a constructor in F1 without claiming pole. It was well deserved for all that mother nature did her part. Magnussen had already excelled to put his Haas into Q3 and then took his chance.
The team left him first at the start of the final qualifying session in wet conditions with heavier rain. His team suggested he should wait, but he proposed to set a time anyway.
Sparks fly as Kevin Magnussen chases pole position in São Paulo. Photograph: Antonin Vincent/DPPI/Shutterstock
It was a bold decision and Magnussen executed it brilliantly. There were also eight other cars at the time, all with slick tires. But Magnussen was the best of them, and just one minute after setting his times, George Russell went off, stuck his Mercedes in the gravel and the session was over. When he restarted, the rain held and Magnussen’s time could not be bettered.
“I’ve never felt like this in my life,” he said. “I don’t know what to say, the team put me on the court at the right time. It’s incredible. [Tomorrow] it’s peak attack, let’s find something fun.”
It was a special moment for K-Mag, as he’s known, who almost cried with joy afterwards and celebrated with Viking enthusiasm by jumping into his car and then hugging team manager Guenther Steiner.
“It wasn’t luck, he deserved it from the driver, from the team,” said Steiner. “Kevin left a lap when needed. When it rains soup, you have to take a spoon and today we had the spoon”.
Russell was lucky because, despite running away, he retains the third place he held at the time while his team-mate Lewis Hamilton was eighth. Ferrari’s Carlos Sainz was fifth but will have a five-place grid penalty in Sunday’s race due to an engine change.
Lando Norris was fourth for McLaren, Esteban Ocon and Fernando Alonso sixth and seventh for Alpine. Sergio Pérez was ninth for Red Bull and Charles Leclerc tenth for Ferrari.