Max Verstappen secured his fourth pole position in a row at the Austrian Grand Prix but was left frustrated after qualifying with the number of lap times deleted for exceeding track limits.
His Red Bull teammate Sergio Perez dropped out in Q2 after seeing all three of his timed laps deleted for indiscretions at Turn 9 or Turn 10, while Verstappen had his first runs in each of Q1 and Q2 also erased for the same issue. The Dutchman admits his enjoyment of his pole lap was tempered by the need to make sure he didn’t go wide at either of the final two corners, while also fighting with the balance of his car.
Jump onboard with @Max33Verstappen as he picks up his sixth pole of the season 🚀#AustrianGP #F1 @pirellisport pic.twitter.com/9YAeDaWSd5
— Formula 1 (@F1) June 30, 2023
“I think it was good enough, but around here, to get the perfect lap together is not that easy, plus today I think it was very difficult with the track limits as well,” Verstappen said. “You leave a little bit of margin I think, especially for me in the last sector. But the lap was fine.
“It’s tricky — you have the high-speed corners and the very low-speed corners. Sometimes with the balance you can want a bit more front or whatever for the low speed and less for the high speed. It’s difficult to always get that right. But happy to of course be first. Around here, a short lap, the margins are very small. We always see that. To be ahead is good for us.”
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The issue of track limits was one that Verstappen felt strongly about after the end of qualifying, feeling the FIA needs to try and take another approach to how to monitor them.
“It is I think one of the worst tracks for it, with the track limits. Also especially towards the end (of the lap), the tires are getting really hot, so they’re not as agile anymore as well compared to the beginning of the lap. It’s super hard to judge around here. You have all the compressions as well where if you hit it slightly wrong, the car immediately drops away from you, or understeers, and then it’s super easy to go over the white line.
“I think today looked very silly. It almost looked like we were amateurs out there, the amount lap times that were getting deleted. And also some of them were so marginal, where even we spoke about it in the briefing before, when it’s very marginal, it’s impossible to judge if it’s out or in. They were still getting deleted.
“I don’t think it was a good look today. Of course people can say, ‘Yeah, well then you stay within the white lines’ — well if it was that easy, then you can take my car and try, but probably you won’t even get up to speed in time. It is super tricky. I think today showed it’s still not easy to have a clear rule about it.
“On most tracks, it works really well, but on some tracks, you might need something different, because of course a lot of the tracks, we share it with MotoGP or whatever bike championships in general, and they want something else outside of the curbs than we would like. For us, putting gravel there is fine, but for a bike, it’s a bit different. We need to think about maybe different solutions.”
Verstappen says he was even trying to be careful in the final corner in Q2 when he exceeded track limits, as one of 47 occasions a lap time was deleted in qualifying.
“I was leaving margin, I just ran out of road. I was not on the limit, but sometimes when you hit the compression wrong… you lose a lap time apparently. For me it was still a very close call. I mean, of course in Q3 you’re going faster than in Q2. It’s just finding your margins. Definitely in Q3 I was a bit more aware of where to put the car, not to risk being looked into.
“If you saw the amount of lap times that were getting deleted today by the amount of drivers, it’s clearly not that easy. I don’t think we’re all idiots out there. Normally we’re quite good on how to judge what the limit is. But this track, I think because of the layout as well and the way the tires operate, they overheat through the lap — it is just very difficult.
“Most tracks, I think it’s fine how we operate it, but some tracks we might need to look into (the process). But at the moment also, no real answers of how to do that. I think we’ve already tried on some tracks to paint a wider white line, which I thought helped a bit. Because the white line in some places is quite narrow with the high speeds we are achieving in that particular corner. This is maybe something we can look into.”