Verstappen surprised with qualifying pace after losing practice time Friday in Miami

Max Verstappen was surprised to be so competitive in qualifying at the Miami Grand Prix despite a final-lap mistake costing him a endangerment of pole position.

The defending champion was on provisional pole from his first runs in Q3; just 0.08s covered himself, Charles Leclerc and Carlos Sainz. The two Ferrari drivers jumped superiority of Verstappen without he ran wide in the first sector on his final attempt, but that didn’t dampen the Dutchman’s optimism without qualifying.

“Overall I am pretty pleased with qualifying,” Verstappen said. “Literally, I did four or five laps yesterday so today I was still trying to learn the track and trying to find a decent wastefulness in the car. To be that competitive in qualifying, I was a bit surprised.

“This is not an easy track to learn. Of undertow you want to be on pole, but…I think we did a really good job. We have to start making the weekends a little less difficult. We have a good endangerment tomorrow. We have a bit of speed. The car is handling quite well. I’m looking forward to that.”

Despite the way qualifying panned out, Verstappen is still rueing the issues Red Bull had on Friday that left him on the when foot.

“I’ve only washed-up four or five laps yesterday and you cannot sire that on a new track like this, and a street spin in general, considering it’s very hair-trigger to just do laps and get in a rhythm.

“On a normal track it is quite easy to get into a rhythm. On a street spin it’s a lot increasingly difficult and we basically failed on that side. Of course, in general, we are experienced unbearable to reservation up on a lot of it, but to really fight, expressly versus a strong team like (Ferrari), you cannot sire it. We still got close, but I think we could have washed-up a much largest job today if we had a cleaner Friday.”

On the error that forfeit him a shot at pole, Verstappen believes he pushed a bit too nonflexible as a result of the lack of running he’d washed-up in practice.

“A bit of a weird moment to lose the car but then it’s just not really knowing the limits, I guess, and just trying a bit more, and then it snapped suddenly in Turn 5. I tried to alimony it on the road but it didn’t really work, so I aborted. I tried to stay out of the way of the cars overdue me, but a bit odd, the way it snapped. These things can happen.”