In another damp and drying qualifying session championship leader Max Verstappen saw off a pacey Lando Norris to claim pole at his home race for the third year running, equalling the record for the number of poles at the seaside circuit of Zandvoort held by Rene Arnoux and his eighth pole of 2023.
Rain earlier in the day saw qualifying commence on a wet track with Q1 and Q2 times being set on the intermediate tyre. Q3 saw the red flags come out twice after Logan Sargent in his first appearance in Q3 of his career had an excursion into the barriers at turn 3 and all remaining runners had switched to the slick tyres upon the session resuming before Charles Leclerc went off at turn 9 bringing out the second red flag.
Verstappen’s final flying lap of the day saw him improve on his previous time by over a second and a half, and despite the best efforts of Lando Norris who had a strong day in his MCL60, the double world champion finished half a second up on the British driver with a time of 1min 10.567sec.
The Dutchman said in the post qualifying press conference that conditions were “tricky” and despite a poor turn one, the rest of his pole lap was “ok”.
The pole sitter went on to say it is “always nice in front of your home crowd to take pole position. I mean they come here and expect you to do it but it’s not always that easy especially with a qualifying like this it is never that straightforward…you need to be out at the right time but luckily we did that.”
The 25-year-old highlighted that 2023 has seen numerous wet-dry qualifying sessions this season, something he seems to enjoy:
“We’ve had a lot of these qualifyings lately where you start in the wet, go to the dry. It’s always quite entertaining.”
Verstappen also praised the “impressive” pace of the Williams and his former teammate Alex Albon, who qualified 4th:
“They’ve been quick all weekend. Quick in the wet, quick in the dry……It’s great for the sport, the more teams are up there and I’m very happy for Alex. He’s a great guy, he was my teammate before….and I’m very happy for him to be up there.”
Pole for Verstappen means the chance for Red Bull to continue their clean sweep of wins this season remains very strong, short of something going awry during tomorrow’s race.
