The rain that rained all day in Montreal meant that the qualifiers took place in similar wet conditions as FP3 earlier on Saturday afternoon, led by Alonso.
The Alpine driver stunned Sainz to finish second with the last lap of Q3, where all drivers were prepared to run throughout the session to take advantage of the drying of the track and the tires operating in the optimal operating range.
Verstappen was untouchable by leading off in Q3 and he hit the pole benchmark to 1m21.299s.
Sainz seemed to be able to escape Verstappen after putting the fastest first sector on his last lap, but while he remained in the dispute, despite losing part of the middle sector, a big slide coming out of the last turn meant he missed enough time for Alonso to overtake his Spanish colleague a few moments later.
Lewis Hamilton took fourth place for Mercedes, which split its strategy at the end of the third quarter by putting soft on George Russell’s car, a decision that reversed when the Briton turned the starting corners in his first lap of pictures.
Russell fell from the lead in eighth to the end of Q3, as the duo of Haas Kevin Magnussen and Mick Schumacher led in pushing the Briton down, taking fifth and sixth.
Then came Esteban Ocon, while Daniel Ricciardo and Zhou Guanyu rounded out the top 10.
Zhou is one of several pilots facing an investigation after a session about driving them during multiple off-track moments during qualifying or trying to find a place in traffic during earlier segments.
Q2 began by splitting the pilots to keep the full wet used in Q1 or moving to the intermediate, with Alonso using this compound to lead the way in this segment, just before Sergio Perez caused a red flag in the barriers in the chic 3/4 turns.
The Red Bull driver was also on the barrier, but he locked his right front and after grabbing the other front brake, he slid on the grass and quickly headed for the barriers.
Although his car didn’t look badly damaged, Perez took a long time to reverse, and when he did, he couldn’t move back because his nose was buried in the barriers, so he was instructed to turn off his engine. as the barriers then had to be rearranged after his car was taken out without the front wing.
When the session restarted after a 12-minute delay, all other pilots headed back to the intermediate fields, and a dry line began to appear.
Leclerc did not bother to join them, as in Q2 he secured a start in front of Yuki Tsunoda at the back of the grid thanks to their engine change penalties, but Lando Norris also did not show up in the top nine. minutes from Q2.
Norris reported an engine problem before a red flag locked him in the McLaren garage, with only two minutes left as the team tried to find and fix the problem, and although he went out for a tour, he was soon ordered to drink again after lap a few seconds off pace.
Not setting a time after the red flag, Norris’s tour of the banker from the beginning of Q2 left him 14th and behind Perez’s best time before his expulsion, with Leclerc taking no part in the middle segment and being knocked out at 15 the place ahead of his fall before the race.
With three cars in trouble or not on the track, only two drivers were at risk of elimination, and when Hamilton jumped into the rankings on his last lap, the pressure was on Alex Albon, Valteri Botas and Okon.
The first two set personal records with Botas ahead, but Okon’s improvement in the last lap in Q2, which Verstappen led, knocked out the Finn.
As in Q3 and Q2, all pilots generally ran through the starting segment as times improved by about six seconds as they blew water away from the race line, except for large puddles of standing water at the tops of the first two turns and the exit. on a hairpin late in the lap, with Verstappen on top.
Pierre Gasly was eliminated in 16th place, with AlphaTauri reporting suffering from a brake problem on this left front wheel, which may have contributed to its drop-off at the end of Q1 during the chic 9/10 turns.
Gasley only briefly left the track, but by not staying to the left of the runoff ladder before the short straight down to Phoebe, he did not follow the instructions of the race directors and will face an investigation after the session.
Sebastian Vettel was disappointed to be eliminated in 17th place after finishing third in a similar wet session at FP3 earlier Saturday afternoon, with Lance Stroll’s 18th place complicating the miserable Aston Martin qualifier.
The other host, Williams driver Nicholas Latifi, was knocked out on the 19th, finishing in front of Tsunoda, who stood a few minutes before the end of Q1, knowing he would start in the back row anyway.
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