At the end of Sprint Qualifying on Friday, there were mixed feelings in the Red Bull garage.
Max Verstappen celebrated his first Pole position in four months. The last time the reigning champion was on top was back in June at the Austrian Grand Prix.
Meanwhile, his teammate Sergio Pérez was met with disappointment as he found himself out of SQ2, marking his eighth early exit this season.
Red Bull went into Austin with a newly upgraded RB20, sending Max Verstappen to the front of the grid with a lap time of 1:32:833, a mere 0.012s ahead of Mercedes’ George Russell. The Dutchman was near the top of the charts during all three sessions of Sprint Qualifying, and he delivered when it mattered most.
His championship rival, McLaren’s Lando Norris, could only qualify P4.
With a smile on his face, he reflected on his session telling F1TV, “We had a good day,” said Verstappen. “Of course, Sprint Qualifying is always very difficult. [With the tyres] you do medium, medium and then a soft. You never really know how much you can push but I’m happy with today. I think all day the car was working quite well, and of course I’m very happy to be first. It’s been a while so very pleased with today.”
Verstappen is currently sat at the top of the championship with a 52-point gap to Norris, a striking difference from his dominance in the past season where he came into the United States Grand Prix with a 209 point lead ahead of teammate Sergio Pérez.
Verstappen’s game plan for the weekend is simple: have a fast car that has a nice balance and is gentle on the tyres.
“Making the car driveable and good on the tyres in the race. That for us is the key.
“We’ll do the best we can tomorrow in the Sprint, but we also know of course the most points are available on Sunday, so that’s where we really want to do well.”
On the other side of the garage though, teammate Sergio Pérez had a significantly tougher Sprint Qualifying session. Following his P16 position in FP1, the Mexican qualified P11, missing SQ3 by 0.192s behind Yuki Tsunoda.
For Perez the session could be summed up into two words, “Very frustrating.”
After placing in the top 10 in SQ1, the 34-year-old failed to make a big step like everyone else in SQ2. He only improved by less than a tenth. Teammate Verstappen found over 0.6s.
“Especially from SQ1 to SQ2, we didn’t have any progression; if anything we took a step back with the tyre, so that made things a lot trickier unfortunately, but it is what it is in the end. Hopefully we’re able to learn quite a bit as we did today with the car, and make sure in qualifying we’re able to put it all together.
He recounts struggling with ride issues all throughout the session.
“I think we’re struggling a little bit with the ride issues in high speed, something we will have a look at,” added Perez. “Our long run pace looked very promising this morning, so I think we’ve got some work to do. For the rest of the weekend, the main target is to be strong in the race.”
With a maximum 59 points available this weekend from both the Sprint Race and the Grand Prix itself, Red Bull will be looking to maximise their chances of big points this weekend. Not only in the Drivers’ Championship fight between Verstappen and Norris, but they will also look to close the 42-point lead McLaren has in the Constructors’ Championship.
