charles leclerc (Ferrari), tied on points with Pérez for second place in the World Championship before the 22nd and final round, will start from third place, ahead of his teammate, the Spaniard Carlos Sainz.
As for the constructors’ standings, Ferrari holds a 19-point lead over Mercedes, which saw its drivers finish faster than the Silver Arrows.
Behind Leclerc, Sainz will start ahead of Lewis Hamilton and George Russell.
At the Yas Marina circuit, the same site of his controversial victory in 2021, Verstappen, whose title he won long before this time, took the 20th pole position of his career and his sixth this year.
Reigning runners-up Hamilton settled for fourth, leaving him to finish the season having failed to start from top, the first time since his debut in 2007.
The seven-time world champion could also end this season without having won a Grand Prix, which would also be a first.
This last race of the year sometimes means the farewell and goodbye of various drivers. First of all, the German Sebastian Vettel (Aston Martin), four times world champion (2010-2013), leaves the discipline.
For the occasion, Vettel equaled his best ranking of the year and will start ninth in his 199th and last Grand Prix, after achieving 53 victories between 2008 and 2019.
Without victory or podium since his arrival in 2020 in the highest category, the Canadian Nicholas Latifi (Williams) sees how his poor results -he achieved the worst time on Saturday- have prompted him to start.
In addition, his accident in Abu Dhabi in 2021, in the last moments of the last Grand Prix of the year, caused the entry of the famous safety car that completely changed the race and offered victory and the world title to Verstappen to the detriment of Hamilton, after a series of controversial decisions by the former race director, Michael Masi.
The German Mick Schumacher, son of the legend Michael, will also leave the elite on Sunday, after his Haas team decided not to keep him, although he hopes to find another team soon. To get his chest out, he qualified in thirteenth position, ahead of his teammate Kevin Magnussen, who will start sixteenth.
The Australian is in the same situation. Daniel Ricciardo (McLaren), who also has no team in 2023, although he could be Red Bull’s reserve driver, as announced by Helmut Marko, one of the most influential leaders of the world champion team.
It was also the last qualifying session with Alpine for the Spaniard Fernando Alonso, who will be at Aston Martin next season, and for Pierre Gasly with AlphaTauri, who will replace the Spaniard in the French team in 2023.
Wearing a helmet in tribute to Vettel, Alonso will start in eleventh place, behind his teammate, the Frenchman Esteban Ocon, 8th. Finally, Gasly only qualified in seventeenth position, a result that reflects a very difficult season behind the wheel of a slow car.
Source: Ambito
I am Pierce Boyd, a driven and ambitious professional working in the news industry. I have been writing for 24 Hours Worlds for over five years, specializing in sports section coverage. During my tenure at the publication, I have built an impressive portfolio of articles that has earned me a reputation as an experienced journalist and content creator.
