By Andrew BensonChief F1 writerLast updated on .From the section Formula 1
The sprint race at the Emilia Romagna Grand Prix was won by Max Verstappen with two laps to go.
The result gives the world champion pole position for the start of the main race on Sunday, and reduces his deficit in the championship to 45 points.
Verstappen lost the lead at the start of the race.
He took his time before coming back at Leclerc and going outside on the last lap.
Red Bull's Sergio Perez fought his way up from seventh on the grid to finish third, while Carlos Sainz moved up from 10th to take fourth.
With more points awarded for the sprint event this year, Sainz's fourth place moves him ahead of Mercedes and into third place in the championship.
Perez closed up quickly on Leclerc in the final laps to finish 1.7 seconds behind the leader.
The loss of pace in the final part of the race was blamed on too much tyre consumption by Leclerc.
Behind the top four, McLaren's Lando Norris and Daniel Ricciardo took fifth and sixth, ahead of Alfa Romeo's Valtteri Bottas and the Haas of Kevin Magnussen, who dropped down from fourth on the grid to take the final point awarded for eighth.
Russell and Hamilton finished 11th and 14th respectively and failed to make up any ground on their disappointing grid positions, the seven-time champion even dropping back one.
Verstappen said that it was really bad at the start. Charles had a bit more pace but then he ran into trouble with the tires.
With other tyre compounds coming into place tomorrow, it might look a bit different.
It is still a front-row start, we struggled with the tyres at the end, so we need to analyse that for tomorrow. The pace was good until then. At the end, we started to have some graining.
He told the tifosi who had cheered him that tomorrow is another day.
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