Max Verstappen described his pole position at the Qatar Grand Prix as “a miracle” after he managed to bounce back from a poor Sprint race.
Red Bull was not competitive in the Sprint as Verstappen finished eighth and was unable to catch Nico Hulkenberg over the shorter race distance, leading him to say he needed a miracle to be competitive in qualifying. However, the four-time world champion was in the mix at the front of the field throughout Saturday night’s session and took pole by 0.055s from George Russell on his final lap.
“I mean, it couldn’t have been worse [in the Sprint] so we just looked at it,” Verstappen said. “It’s not all super clear, but we’re like, well, we have to go and try this direction. We put it on the car and it worked.
“There are a lot of people back at the factory analyzing a lot of stuff already throughout the whole weekend. But at the end of the day, you have to make the decisions on track if you want to do it or not. [The] simulator is running in the background as well, and yeah, a miracle happened!
[lawrence-auto-related count=3 category=1388]
“I did think that maybe we could improve the car a little bit, but not like this, that’s for sure.
“It just felt a bit more hooked up on entry, mid-corner, like everything that was bad before improved quite a lot. I felt it straight away from lap one that it all just felt a bit more consistent. That’s exactly what we needed to be a bit more competitive.”
Despite the step forward, Verstappen says the race performance in the Sprint was so poor that he is still not certain of how competitive Red Bull will be on Sunday.
“It’s still a bit of a question mark,” he said. “I did feel that yesterday we were not too far off in qualifying, and then I felt like we were quite far off in the Sprint. So this is great, to be on pole, but I’m not sure yet if it’s going to be enough to really be the outright fastest, but we’ll find out tomorrow.”