Key events
Brundle observes that everyone is leaving a gap to the car in front. You want some visbility.
But cars are going out.
“It’s pretty heavy,” says Piastri.
But Brundle is seeing the crowd back in their ponchos … some teams are staying in their garages. “Rain is intensifying again,” says Hulkenberg.
Restart at 7.26pm GMT.
More rain coming, though, so everyone needs a lap asap.
David Croft says restart is coming in three and a half minutes.
Bernd Mayländer says this is our opening. But Ted Kravitz is worried we won’t get out in time.
Drivers getting back in the car, just in case Bernd Mayländer says yes.
Ferrari’s Fred Vasseur: “Now the issue is that we have rain in 15 minutes … We just have to be ready each time the safety car goes out … We all want to go on track, but race control is right, we have to put safety first.”
Bernd Mayländer getting cheers and screams as he goes round in the safety car.
Ollie Bearman speaks: “The wettest conditions I have experienced in a race car, and in a car full stop to be honest, and that’s a lot for someone growing up in the UK.”
This is now the longest ever Q1, overtaking Hungary in 2016, which lasted 1hr 10min.
Rain easing and the radar looks better.
A few video nasties now, with shots from the cars that did go out for the ill-fated 2mins 23sec.
Bernd Mayländer speaks on camera and the safety car driver says it’s just not safe. I am beating myself over the head for not realising that Interlagos, like Interlaken in Switzerland, means between the lakes.
Leo Addor writes: “There’s an expression in Portuguese called enxugar gelo. It means drying up ice, with a towel. It’s used referring to doing anything futile, of course. The more you dry up the ice cube with the towel, the more it melts and so on. It is literally what those race marshals are being paid to do …”
Bernie Collins reckons the next half an hour to 40 minutes could be drier. Get Q1 done and set a grid.
Water flowing on the Rio José Carlos Pace.
The Sky team have dug into the archive and looked back at the late Alan Jones, the 1980 champion who died this week.
Bernd Mayländer in the safety car reports conditions are now worse.
I see a little silhouetto of a man. Scaramouche, Scaramouche, will you do the Fandango? Thunderbolt and lightning, very, very frightening.
Now I know how the over-by-over team feel when it rains.
Bernd Mayländer back on track in the safety car. But “it’s grim out there” says Croft. “It’s murky, it’s miserable.”
David Croft and Martin Brundle increasingly sceptical that we will actually get qualifying today. Apparently a rule change for this season means that if qualifying cannot take place in time for the race, then it would start in championship order.
Oops. Lightning.
“I think it’s fantastic to have so young champion … I knew Kimi from five, six years old.” He raves over the champion’s win from 19th at Monza.
Drivers stepping out of their cars. Craig Slater now with Emerson Fittipaldi, the earliest F1 champion I can remember watching drive. He was once the youngest champion.
Sisyphus’s team of marshals sweeping water off the track.
“We just see lots of standing water,” comes over the radio.
Ted Kravitz fears that the next band of rain is in. Things are getting worse, not better.
The safety car is going round, and it doesn’t look clever.
Brundle wondering how it will go if sunset approaches. We have a couple of hours to go but a crash might make life difficult. In 2024, qualifying had to be moved to the Sunday morning.
