Brazilian GP qualifying CALLED OFF as heavy rain and lightning batters Interlagos F1 track

Heavy rain began to fall not long before the start of qualifying for the Brazilian Grand Prix which led to the FIA deciding to delay the start of the session before postponing it altogether

Qualifying for the Brazilian Grand Prix has been postponed until Sunday after heavy rain and thunderstorms battered the Sao Paulo track.

The Sprint race at Interlagos, held earlier on Saturday, was run in dry conditions and Lando Norris took victory. But he was made to wait for his chance to follow that up with a bid at pole for the main Grand Prix as the weather turned.

Heavy rain began to fall around an hour before the start of the session. And that soon turned into thunderstorms which, as the FIA radars predicted they would last for more than an hour, led to the decision to postpone the start of qualifying.

Several more delayed start times were given while the safety and medical cars were sent out onto the track at regular intervals to get a sense of the condition. But with each delay, with light fading, it seemed more and more likely that a postponement was coming.

And that was confirmed after around two hours of waiting as the rain continued to fall. Weather radars did not give any indication that the downpours were going to cease any time soon and so the FIA decided to call off the session and return to the Interlagos track on Sunday morning.

F1 chief executive Stefano Domanicali said: "The conditions are not safe to drive - it is as simple as that. There is a problem of light that will also very soon hit the track so, unfortunately, that is the situation we have to manage. [Sunday morning] is the plan now."

And an FIA statement read: "The decision was taken due to the lack of visibility caused by the level of rain we have experienced in the past few hours. There is a lot of standing water on parts of the circuit which renders conditions unsafe."

More rain is forecast for Sunday morning so, even though qualifying is postponed until then, there is no guarantee that the track will be safe enough then either. It may be the case that the FIA and the teams need to come to an agreement on how to set the grid for the race without running a full qualifying session.

Should it be impossible to run qualifying on Sunday morning, then the classification from practice on Friday could be used to set the grid for the race. That would be especially bad news for Max Verstappen who was 15th on those standings and, because he has a five-place grid penalty to serve, would start the race from dead last.

Norris won the Sprint race earlier in the day, gifted that victory by team-mate Oscar Piastri. The Australian had qualified on pole and led for most of the 24-lap dash, but McLaren asked him to move aside with three laps to go to give the Brit an extra point in his chase of Max Verstappen in the drivers' title race.

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