Red Bull
Verstappen always looked in the mix here and can never be discounted when it comes to one lap pace. He was quick from the off in Qualifying, regularly mixing it right at the front. But come Q3, the Dutchman was incredibly fast and he grabbed his fifth pole position of the year by 0.077s, which is a fairly large margin considering how tight the gaps were on Saturday. Tsunoda did well in making Q3 with relative ease, but once there seemed to suffer some sort of power issue. As such he appeared to spend some of the session towing his team mate, but he will inherit a place for the race when Hamilton’s penalty is applied.
Max Verstappen, 1st, 1:18.792
“It was a great day for us and good to be so competitive here at this track. To get pole here is big: we need to celebrate these successes and it was a confidence boost for sure. It is always tough round here and you have to really commit with low downforce and hit the apex perfectly. It is great to get the fastest lap but I never look at these kind of stats as it depends on so many different factors. There is new tarmac which helps and in every session we got a little bit better, which is what we wanted. The car was in a better window and I had a lot more confidence to go for it and attack the corners. Tomorrow, of course, the win is always the target. The McLarens are pretty strong so it will be tough to beat them, but if the feeling of the tyres are better then who knows, we might be able to.”
Yuki Tsunoda, 10th, 1:19.519
“Reaching Q3 was exactly what I wanted to achieve today and I am happy to see the progress that we are making race by race which resulted in winning points at Zandvoort last weekend. It was a shame that I was first to take to the track in Q3 and had to lead the pack, as traditionally Monza is a track that needs slipstream. I would like to congratulate the team overall this weekend and Max for putting it on pole, it has not been easy in general but I felt the strength of the adaptation that everyone in the garage has shown. I feel like I demonstrated consistency in Q3 and was only a tenth behind Max which is positive. Since the upgrade brought to Spa we have been making progress but the balance definitely still feels a bit messy. Tomorrow won’t be easy and our one lap pace wasn’t beautiful but I am feeling confident.”
Laurent Mekies, Team Principal
“If you look back to where we were here last year as a team, it was a very difficult weekend, so big credit to the team because they have done such a good job of trying to get to the bottom of what went wrong. We worked to find out what limited us on this track and came here with some answers. Then you add the Max magic to that. It has been a very solid weekend so far, Friday was strong but still nobody took that to be good enough and Max, Yuki and their teams have been chasing the next thousandth, and the next thousandth after that.
“There were quite a few cars capable of taking pole today and everyone was in a very small gap, but from Friday Max really guided us on what he needed to extract more from the car. Well done to him because he was untouchable and drove an incredible lap. Yuki has had another good weekend so far, and to see him into Q3 again shows the progress he is making in the car. He missed out with track position on his final run, but he’s in the mix to fight for good points on Sunday.
“It will be a race that goes down to the smallest details, and we will fight very hard. The McLaren advantage tends to increase as the race goes on, and while we have been in front of them a number of times, they have often shown more pace. So, we are working every weekend to try to reduce that deficit and tomorrow will be another answer as to our progress in this area, as four or five cars could be racing for a win.”
