Piastri outperformed Norris in the Sao Paulo sprint pole.

Piastri outperformed Norris in

Piastri outperformed Norris in the Sao Paulo sprint pole.

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

Max Verstappen, Norris’ title opponent, finished fourth in the Red Bull, behind Charles Leclerc of Ferrari.

With a five-place grid penalty for Sunday’s premier grand prix, Verstappen leads Norris by 47 points going into the weekend.

In Saturday’s sprint race, where a victory carries eight points.

A second seven, and so on down to eighth.

Norris has a chance to regain a few points on Verstappen thanks to the outcome of sprint qualification.

Carlos Sainz of Ferrari qualified fifth for the sprint, surpassing George Russell of Mercedes.

Lewis Hamilton’s second Mercedes will start the eleventh sprint after being knocked out in the second session.

Sergio Perez, Verstappen’s teammate, finished in 13th place, suffering the same fate.

Since McLaren had a significant lead over the rest of the field.

Piastri secured pole by using a different tire strategy from Norris.

On his first run, Norris set the pace with a lap time of one minute 8.928 seconds on new tires.

While the Australian was little under 0.3 seconds slower on worn tires.

Piastri changed to a new set of tires, but Norris ran his second lap on the same set.

Which had already been used for three laps.

Piastri defeated Norris by a mere 0.029 seconds, but the Briton failed to make any progress.

Verstappen was only 0.056 seconds behind Leclerc and 0.320 seconds behind him in fourth place.