Max Verstappen says that his Red Bull RB20 felt more connected during qualifying for the Qatar GP. It gave him the confidence to push more and ultimately taking pole for Sunday’s race, before his penalty was handed out.
The four-time world champion has secured his first pole position since Austria but is under investigation for allegedly driving unnecessarily slowly in Q3. The turnaround from a difficult sprint qualifying and sprint race was possible due to set-up changes ahead of qualifying.
Car “a bit more hooked up” during qualifying
Speaking in the post-qualifying interview at the Qatar GP, Verstappen admits that he didn’t expected to be on pole. With the changes, he felt more connected to the car.
“I also didn’t expect that. But yeah, well done to the team, you know, to give me a car that feels a bit more connected. And once the car is a bit more together, you can push harder and it felt a lot better out there in qualifying for me.
”We did change a bit on the car, but I never thought it would make such a swing in performance. So that’s promising. I hope, of course, it also lasts more in the race. I don’t know that yet, but it just felt already a lot more stable over one lap, and that’s exactly what we need.”
Asked in the following press conference on how different the car felt compared to earlier this weekend, he said the car felt more hooked up in every area, which felt bad before.
”Quite different. Just felt a bit more hooked up on entry, mid-corner, like everything that was bad before improved quite a lot. So I felt it straight away from lap one that, yeah, it all just felt a bit more consistent. And that’s exactly what we needed to be a bit more competitive.”
Horner: Red Bull “threw kitchen sink” at car
Red Bull team principal Christian Horner explained that the team changed everything it could to get the tyres bite into the asphalt in colder conditions. These changes helped Verstappen to beat Mercedes# Gorge Russell for pole.
“It’s a great turnaround. I think the engineers and the team back in Milton Keynes have worked very hard,” Horner told Sky F1.
“They’ve got a good set-up on the car, Max has immediately felt [more confident] – his first comment was that it feels better. And then he’s just gone out and delivered in the most spectacular way.
“We pretty much threw the kitchen sink at it; pretty much everything you could change, we did change.
“You never know if it’s all going to come together in the balance. And it did, and he was able to really nail it. We really struggled yesterday, Turn 1, Turn 2, and particularly the last turn; a little bit at seven as well. And those corners suddenly came alive for us.
“That last lap, it was neck and neck with George going into that last turn and he nailed the last corner, and it was just good enough.”
Verstappen expects a tough race
The 27-year-old noted that the race on Sunday will be tough. He hopes that the set-up changes also help with race pace, where Mercedes and McLaren look the strongest.
”It’s going to be a tough race, I think, physically, but I think also mainly on the tyres, just making sure that you’re good on them.
“The front left around here gets eaten up quite a lot, so it’s all about managing that tomorrow, but I hope that with the setup that we have on the car now, it will be a bit better.
“It’s all very close behind, and you could see in the Sprint, well, I mean, Mercedes, McLaren and Ferrari, they were all quick, and now it seems like we are in that mix, and I hope tomorrow as well.”
Afterwards, it was confirmed Verstappen was handed a one-place penalty for his Q3 incident with George Russell, meaning he’ll start P2 tomorrow.
