Max Verstappen believes it will be difficult for him to fight Lando Norris for victory in the Dutch Grand Prix given the gap between the two in qualifying.
Norris secured pole position by over 0.35s at Zandvoort on Saturday, with Verstappen qualifying alongside his closest championship challenger on the front row. Despite a strong starting position, Verstappen admits the margin in qualifying suggests Norris will have too much of an advantage over him across a race distance.
“We’ll give it a good go, but of course, when you are more than three tenths behind in qualifying, I think we have to be realistic,” Verstappen said. “I just try to have a good race tomorrow.
“I would hope [to be more competitive in the race], but I think when you see the gap, it’s going to be very tricky. Also, it just seems like Lando’s a bit happier in general with just the driving and how he feels. I’m a bit more all over the place with the balance, so I don’t know — maybe it stabilizes a bit tomorrow, but I guess we’ll find out.”
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The championship leader points to a lack of predictability from his car during qualifying as one of the reasons he found it difficult to put a lap together, and didn’t think he was fighting for pole position at any stage despite ending up P2.
“I had a bit of a moment in [Turn] 11-12, but that was also a bit like my qualifying in general. Every run, there were always one or two corners where I felt like I was losing a lot of time with just a gust of wind. It seemed like it was very sensitive for us.
“The car was really responding aggressively to it, and that’s why I think every single run that I did was different — I just had a different balance every time. It just made it very difficult. Q3, I think the first lap wasn’t too bad. Then I tried to push it a bit more, but everything just seems very snappy, very on the edge, I would say.
“But nevertheless, I’m happy to be on the front row. I think after Q1 and Q2, I’d never really been in that top-five region. Of course, I was trying to save tires a bit because I only had four sets, but I never really felt that I was in the fight for pole. And then when you come out of qualifying on the front row, I think that’s OK.”