Formula One hit the Las Vegas Strip for the penultimate qualifying session of the 2023 season early on Saturday. The Strip, thus far, has produced fantastic views of Formula One night racing at its best and street circuit speeds nearing 200 mph.

Scuderia Ferrari left off where they started the Thursday practice sessions with a one-two qualifying sweep with Charles Leclerc edging his teammate, Carlos Sainz, by just 44 thousandths (0.044s) of a second to give Ferrari its 249th pole position in its F1 history and securing the young Monegasque driver the 23rd pole of his career.

"I'm excited to be starting on pole tomorrow, I really like the track and I've felt comfortable in the car all weekend," said Leclerc. "It's a bit more tricky than expected to overtake and I hope we see some good battles tomorrow. Our race pace looks quite good so hopefully we can convert the pole into a win."

Sainz will lose 10 positions for replacing a battery after suffering damage from a raised manhole cover bracket in FP1. SkySports reported the mood in the garage was that this was an uncalled for penalty.

"It's been a great qualifying for the team. Unfortunately, it won't be a front row lockout tomorrow as I will take a penalty," said Sainz. "The frustration and anger I feel right now won't go away easily, even more so looking at how competitive we are on this new track."

"However, you can be sure I will do absolutely everything to recover from P12 and I know we can produce a solid race. It's unknown territory, but hopefully it will be an enjoyable Sunday with many overtakes," added Sainz.

"It's significant that we have finished on top of the timesheet in every session which is good preparation for the race," said Frederic Vasseur, Ferrari Team Principal. "Unfortunately, we have to deal with the penalty for Carlos, who deserved to start from the front row. We know the penalty is unfair but he has had strong and consistent pace all weekend, as has Charles."

Three time World Champion Max Verstappen qualified third with the Silver Arrow of Mercedes driver, George Russell, qualifying fourth.

Pierre Gasly qualified his Alpine A523, which found some speed at the street circuit in Las Vegas, an impressive fifth. Gasly will start fourth on Saturday night due to the Sainz penalty.

"I'm very pleased with the team effort today especially as our expectation was much lower than what we have achieved," said Gasly. "We proved the predictions wrong and hopefully we can do the same tomorrow where we start fourth because of Carlos's [Sainz] penalty."

"The car felt really good, I felt comfortable and that is so important, especially at a street track where you need to feel in sync with everything," added Gasly.

Both Williams teams had impressive qualifying results with Logan Sargeant, competing on his native soil, qualifying sixth, the best of his career, and teammate Alex Albon qualifying P7.

"We had an excellent result today with both drivers completing a brilliant qualifying session. The car was working well and both drivers were able to make the most of that to get into Q3 and qualify in very strong positions for the Grand Prix," said Dave Robson, Head of Williams Racing's Vehicle Performance

Two other top ten qualifying surprises on Saturday were the Alfa Romeo of Valtteri Bottas and the Haas of Kevin Magnussen who qualified ninth and 10th, respectively.

"We were able to find the right window to operate our car, and we were able to extract more performance in every segment of qualifying," said Bottas. "There's never a single silver bullet, but we executed every element well: it's a lot of small margins that worked for us and made a big difference in the end result."

"We got one car into Q3 and one just outside, with Nico locking up going into a corner. Kevin said it wasn't his best lap, the money lap, but we're happy to be starting P8 and P13," said Haas Team Principal, Guenther Steiner.

Some unexpected qualifying results on Saturday were both McLaren Racing's MCL60's not being able to advance out of Q1 and Mercedes driver and seven-time World Champion, Lewis Hamilton, not being able to advance out of Q2.

"So far, this weekend in Vegas has been a bit of a struggle, both in terms of putting the car in a decent operating performance window, and also dealing with the behaviour of the tyres, which are difficult in terms of warm up but at the same time can also get damaged very easily with graining," said Andrea Stella, McLaren Team Principal. "Despite that, we had enough performance to progress from Q1, but we were not able because the single set of tyres we were going to use was degrading too rapidly and was not enough to beat cars that used two sets."

"We'll take that on the chin and refocus on preparing for the race. It may be eventful, tyre behavior will be a major factor, and we'll do our best to recover and score some points," added Stella.

Pos	Driver		Team		Time		Gap

1	Leclerc		Ferrari		1:32.726	149.598 mph
2	Sainz		Ferrari		1:32.770	0.044
3	Verstappen	Red Bull	1:33.104	0.378
4	Russell		Mercedes	1:33.112	0.386
5	Gasly		Alpine		1:33.239	0.513
6	Albon		Williams	1:33.323	0.597
7	Sargeant	Williams	1:33.513	0.787
8	Bottas		Alfa Romeo	1:33.525	0.799
9	Magnussen	Haas		1:33.537	0.811
10	Alonso		Aston Martin	1:33.555	0.829
11	Hamilton	Mercedes	1:33.837	
12	Perez		Red Bull	1:33.855	
13	Hulkenberg	Haas		1:33.979	
14	Stroll		Aston Martin	1:34.199	
15	Ricciardo	AlphaTauri	1:34.308	
16	Norris		McLaren		1:34.703	
17	Ocon		Alpine		1:34.834	
18	Zhou		Alfa Romeo	1:34.849	
19	Piastri		McLaren		1:34.850	
20	Tsunoda		AlphaTauri	1:36.447	

Pos	Driver		Team		Time		Gap

1	Russell		Mercedes	1:34.093	147.424 mph
2	Piastri		McLaren		1:34.491	0.398
3	Sargeant	Williams	1:34.645	0.552
4	Verstappen	Red Bull	1:34.653	0.560
5	Perez		Red Bull	1:34.706	0.613
6	Albon		Williams	1:34.726	0.633
7	Alonso		Aston Martin	1:34.788	0.695
8	Hamilton	Mercedes	1:34.853	0.760
9	Bottas		Alfa Romeo	1:34.908	0.815
10	Magnussen	Haas		1:35.067	0.974
11	Norris		McLaren		1:35.089	0.996
12	Hulkenberg	Haas		1:35.112	1.019
13	Stroll		Aston Martin	1:35.253	1.160
14	Ocon		Alpine		1:35.297	1.204
15	Zhou		Alfa Romeo	1:35.881	1.788
16	Leclerc		Ferrari		1:35.908	1.815
17	Sainz		Ferrari		1:35.939	1.846
18	Tsunoda		AlphaTauri	1:36.087	1.994
19	Gasly		Alpine		1:36.485	2.392
20	Ricciardo	AlphaTauri	1:37.778	3.685




             

                          

             
(image provided by Alfa Romeo F1 Team KICK)