Lewis Hamilton in the starting pole of the Qatar F1 Grand Prix | Sports News

The Mercedes driver beat his opponent in the Verstappen championship, who finished second in Sunday’s race.

Britain’s Lewis Hamilton will start from pole at Qatar’s Formula 1 Grand Prix on Sunday ahead of world championship rival Max Verstapp.

Hamilton of Mercedes clocked 20,827 seconds a minute at the Losail International Circuit, having seen only a MotoGP race in the past.

He was Hamilton’s fourth pole of the season and broke the 102nd record overall.

He was almost half a second behind Red Bull’s Verstapp, a teammate Helmut Marko said was “alarming”.

Valtteri Bottas was third in the second Mercedes.

Verstappen is at the top of the tournament, taking a 14-point lead over Hamilton in a tough title duel with three races left, and Hamilton hopes his pole will help him reduce his deficit further on Sunday.

The gap in qualifying times will give everyone at Red Bull an uneasy night: almost half a second, a clear sign that Hamilton’s new engine put on last weekend has given him a new lease of life in search of an unprecedented eighth world title.

F1 race for the first time in Qatar next weekend. Here’s a photo I took of the Losail track 787 on a Dreamliner a few years ago # F1 #QatarGP pic.twitter.com/yC927fQx8P

– Ian Court (@iancourtracing) November 15, 2021

Hamilton has a boost after winning a spectacular victory from 10th place on the grid in Brazil last weekend.

“I stayed here until midnight last night to work with the engineers, who also work late, are hard workers, and they found a lot of areas that I could improve on,” Hamilton said.

Mercedes took an unexpected advantage in their titanic title fight with Red Bull after Verstapp teammate Sergio Perez failed to make it to the Q3 10 knockout stages.

With the Mexican down in the sixth row, Red Bull’s tactics on Sunday’s grill rest on Verstapp to upset Mercedes.

Qatar F1 events

Sunday’s race is the first in a 10-year deal between F1 and Qatar, and the teams are still learning the route. Qatar will be the 36th country to take Formula One.

Start time: 17:00 (14:00 GMT).

Return distance: 5.38 km (3.34 miles)

Total distance (57 laps): 306.66 km (190.54 miles)

The circuit has hosted MotoGP since 2004, and in 2008 it became a night race when it also opened the season.

Track: Fast and fast and has 16 corners of medium and high speed.

Weather conditions: Mild and similarly accustomed to the Abu Dhabi group.