Piastri beats Verstappen to pole after Tsunoda crash
Piastri edged Verstappen by 0.034 seconds despite encountering traffic in the final two corners.
McLaren's Oscar Piastri beat Red Bull's Max Verstappen to pole position at the Emilia-Romagna Grand Prix in a qualifying session that featured an enormous accident for Red Bull's Yuki Tsunoda.
According to the BBC, Piastri edged Verstappen by 0.034 seconds despite encountering traffic in the final two corners and failing to improve his time in the final sector.
Both Verstappen and McLaren's Lando Norris fell short on their final laps, and the Briton was demoted to fourth by Mercedes' George Russell.
And the surprise of qualifying was both the performance of the Aston Martin team and the failure of Ferrari to get either car into the top 10.
Fernando Alonso took Aston Martin's best result of the season with fifth place, team-mate Lance Stroll also making the top 10 in eighth place.
Charles Leclerc and Lewis Hamilton could manage only 11th and 12th places at Ferrari's first home race of the season, underlining their continuing struggles.
Italian 18-year-old Kimi Antonelli, whose family home is just half an hour from the track, could only manage 13th in the other Mercedes.
The session featured two red flags, the first for a terrifying accident for Tsunoda, who lost control on the entry to the Villeneuve chicane and spun across the gravel before the car was launched into the air off the tyre barrier.
It somersaulted and landed upside down, before righting itself upon landing. The Japanese was uninjured and able to walk away from the crash.
He said the crash was "just really stupid, pushing unnecessarily hard," at a time when he was not familiar with a number of significant changes made to the set-up after a difficult final practice session.
Tsunoda was not the only driver to hit the barriers, as Alpine debutant Franco Colapinto also spun into the barriers, this time at the Tamburello chicane.
Colapinto's was a less dramatic accident, as he lost control on the exit kerb and spun across the grass before going nose-first into the barrier.
The Argentine was also unhurt.
