The championship leader missed out on what could have been the tenth pole position of the season by only 0.013s to Ferrari’s Carlos Sainz.
He didn’t control the practice sessions compared to what he did in Zandvoort, scoring P6 in this morning’s FP3. However, the Red Bull driver definitely had recovered some speed by the time of Q1, where he led the hard tyres segment ahead of his former teammate Alex Albon.
He bagged the top spot for Q2 as well, but in his first Q3 attempt he encountered some issues and slightly went off track on the exit of the second chicane, even putting a wheel in the gravel. His second run was instead much faster, and put him up in provisional P1 until Sainz managed to respond.
The Dutch driver was ultimately very satisfied with the starting position he achieved this afternoon, as he said in the post-qualifying press conference:
“It was not really surprising, they were quick also last year. Also, when you look at their rear wing it seems like it’s quite well optimised for Monza, whereas our wing – especially for one lap – is maybe not the best optimisation.”
Photo credits: Red Bull Racing
In spite of the special wing configuration introduced for the weekend by the Italian squad, the two-time World Champion still managed to stay very close to Sainz in qualifying, and Verstappen mentioned that he believes his race pace tomorrow will be even better:
“But the race normally should be better, so nothing too shocking to be honest. You could see in Q1, Q2, Q3… every run you could see that it was very closely matched.”
The Dutch driver also went into more detail on the issues he encountered in the practice on Friday, admitting that he had struggled at first to find the right set-up and aerodynamic compromise:
“From my side, Friday was a little more tricky, but I think we can’t really complain. Here it was a bit more difficult to find the right trade-off with the downforce for us, but I was very happy this morning.”
“I thought the car was working well on one lap and on the long run as well. So yeah, I’m happy with second. You know at Monza it’s always very tight. Sometimes you might jump ahead, sometimes you’re just behind, but I’m confident for tomorrow,” he concluded on a high note.
