Following a rather calm Friday practice session at the Circuit of Barcelona-Catalunya ahead of this weekend’s Spanish Grand Prix, Max Verstappen exploded into life in qualifying and came dangerously close to stealing pole from Charles Leclerc.
Leclerc has been fastest in every practice session at the Spanish Grand Prix and was again fastest in the first round of qualifying, but Verstappen was fastest in Q2 after Leclerc opted to skip the second runs.
Verstappen took advantage of the opportunity to set a time of 1:19.219s, nearly a quarter of a second faster than Leclerc’s Ferrari teammate Carlos Sainz, ensuring a tense finish in the last top ten pole shot-out session.
Verstappen took the lead in that duel, setting a time of 1:19.073s to take provisional pole after Leclerc went for a quick spin and failed to establish a time, but the Monegasque came back with his second attempt and took the lead by 0.323s.
A DRS failure on the RB18 blocked Verstappen’s attempt to respond as he began his final flying lap, leaving him unable to improve on his previous time and forced to settle for second spot on the grid for tomorrow’s race.
“I couldn’t do my final run,” he told the media in parc ferme after the end of the session.
“Either the DRS didn’t open or I just lost power, so it’s a bit of a shame.”
In an interview with Sky Sports F1, Red Bull team principal Christian Horner acknowledged the cause.
“It wasn’t actually power. In the end, it was a DRS that didn’t open,” he explained.
“We need to get the car back to understand what’s caused, because it opened on the back straight just as a check as it came back into the pits.”
“I don’t think we had enough today to beat that lap of Charles,” he admitted. “I don’t think we’d have beaten Charles today, but I think we would have been closer than the times suggest.”
When asked if he thought he could have challenged for pole without the DRS issue, Verstappen said: “It’s always difficult to tell. Overall to be on the front row for us here, looking at the whole weekend so far, was a good achievement.”
“But I would have liked to go for that final run.”
However, losing pole is far from the end of this weekend’s narrative. Despite starting from the back, Verstappen has beaten Leclerc in the last two races, indicating that tomorrow’s race is still very much up for grabs.
In the blazing temperatures, Verstappen predicted that it would all come down to who was better on the tyres.
“The last few races we seemed pretty decent on the tyres, tomorrow will be very hot, very warm,” Verstappen said.
“Hopefully our car will be again a bit kinder on the tyres, but it’s a bit difficult to tell at the moment,” he added.
“This track will be quite tough to pass, but let’s see.”
Red Bull appears to be optimistic that the DRS issue that occurred during en dof qualifying will not damage their race.
“These things are tending to happen, we saw Ferrari change the chassis last night [on Carlos Sainz’ car] because of a fuel system issue,” Horner said.
“Unfortunately, it’s hit us at inconvenient times… the last time you want it is on the last run in Q3.”
“But as a team we work hard, we are trying to understand what the issue is. It may be as simple as a piece of rubber’s got stuck in the mechanism.”
Verstappen’s teammate at Red Bull, Sergio Perez, will start from P5, beside Lewis Hamilton.
“Today was tough,” said the Mexican driver.
“There was more to give, especially on my final run in Q3. We tried something different with the set-up and it felt a bit awkward, so I didn’t get a great lap.”
“I have felt like I have been struggling throughout the weekend. I haven’t been comfortable, we tried some things on the car and the pace was there but I couldn’t quite make it work to put that lap together today.”
“It’s not an ideal result but I think we will have good race pace and we will push from the start. I still think we can fight from fifth, tomorrow is a long race and anything can happen.”
“It’s going to be very hot, especially for the tyres. Degradation will be high so it will be an interesting one,” he added.
“Our long runs have looked good in practice so we can be confident.”
