Max Verstappen stormed to pole position at the 2023 Japanese GP with a comfortable margin over the competition after missing out on it for the last two race weekends. The Dutchman explained how his lap at the legendary circuit “brought a smile” to his face and hit back at those who suspected Red Bull might have been hurt by FIA’s recent flexi-wing clampdown with TD018.
Photo Credits: Red Bull Content Pool
After a difficult weekend last time out at the Singapore GP, normal service resumed for Max Verstappen and Red Bull in qualifying for the Japanese GP, with the reigning world champion making a clean sweep of practice sessions before claiming a comfortable pole position around the famous figure-of-eight circuit by nearly six tenths of a second from the two McLaren cars who managed P2 and P3 with Oscar Piastri and Lando Norris, respectively.
The 0.581s gap between him and Piastri marks Suzuka’s largest pole position margin since Michael Schumacher put 0.490s between himself and his brother Ralf at the 2004 event. Speaking to Sky Sports after the session, the Dutchman explained how his RB19 was working “from lap one” this weekend, and said the confidence he gained from it “brought a smile” to his face:
“It’s been good from lap one onwards. It gave me a lot of confidence. Of course, throughout the weekend, you make little adjustments to the car, especially in Qualifying for Q3,” he told Sky Sports F1. “When you have that confidence, especially in Sector 1, you can really push it to the limit, but in a controlled way. It brought a smile to my face while driving.”
Verstappen admitted his confidence was such in qualifying that he could “smash” lap times without even thinking about it, in contrast to other races where his pole laps might not have been ideal:
“You have pole positions where you feel the lap feels quite OK, but it feels a bit edgy or you think there was a bit more lap time in it, or you could have changed the balance around a little bit.
“I think today and the whole weekend, I knew if I went out, I could smash the lap time without having to think about it, whereas some other tracks it’s a bit different. And that made it very enjoyable to drive this weekend.”
Red Bull’s incredible winning streak ended last time out in Singapore and coincided with the arrival of FIA’s technical directive TD018, regarding flexibility of aerodynamic parts, which left some suspicious it might have pegged back the Milton Keynes squad – and the two-time world champion was keen to put those suspicions to bed after his dominant qualifying display in Japan, saying the sceptics can go “suck on an egg”:
“We had a bad weekend [in Singapore], of course the people start talking about that it’s all because of the technical directives. I think they can go suck on an egg,” he said. “From my side, I was just very fired up to have a good weekend here and make sure that we were strong.”
