Verstappen: "The car was in decent window" in Austin Sprint qualifying
Having struggled for pace in recent rounds, reigning world champion Max Verstappen bounced back in yesterday's short qualifying to take pole position for the Austin F1 Sprint.
Following the unusually long break after the Singapore Grand Prix, Max Verstappen started the triple header of the Austin, Mexico City and Sao Paulo in perfect fashion, by grabbing pole for today's Sprint.
The Dutch driver looked strong in practice, and appeared to be on the pace on Pirelli's medium compound in the opening two segments of sprint qualifying. He needed a big final lap after the hugely impressive time from Mercedes driver George Russell, but he got his act together to beat his British driver by just 12 thousands of a second.
Speaking of his opening day in Austin, Verstappen said that Red Bull managed to find a decent operating window for his upgraded RB20 which meant that he felt comfortable all day long.
“It was a positive day. From lap one the car was in a decent window and I felt quite comfortable. I could attack the high speed corners and I think we were quite quick there.
"Going into a Sprint quali is always a tricky one as you do two mediums and then a soft tyre: with the mediums you get a bit of reference but then you go into SQ3 with the soft tyre which is only really one lap. You can’t really push to the limit and you have to leave a bit of a margin.
"Looking at the lap, there are a few little balance issues to sort out, but to be ahead of the others is really positive. I’m aware that there are a lot of fast cars around me but I’m happy and it’s definitely a positive return. Looking to the rest of the weekend, we just want to make the car a bit more driveable and that we are all good on the tyres in the race.”
His team-mate Sergio Perez endured a shock elimination at the end of SQ2, and will only line up in eleventh on the grid for today's sprint race. The Mexican driver put his struggles down to "ride issues" in the high-speed sections of the Circuit of the Americas.
“Today was very frustrating, especially from SQ1 to SQ2, we didn’t have any progression and if anything, we took a step back with the tyres - that made things a lot tricker.
"I am struggling too much early on in the lap, through sector one and we need to look at that. I think I am suffering quite a bit with ride issues in high speed and that’s something we also need to look into. Hopefully we can learn quite a bit today from the car and make sure in qualifying tomorrow that we are able to put it together.
"We still have some work to do for the rest of the weekend, the main target is to be strong in the race and our long run pace looked very promising this morning," the Mexican concluded.
