Verstappen hints at "a few limitations" with his car in Qatar
Having been unable to take on the fight against the McLarens of Oscar Piastri and Lando Norris so far during the Qatar Grand Prix weekend, reigning world champion Max Verstappen has hinted at "a few limitations" with his car at the Lusail International Circuit.
Red Bull displayed a strong performance in the opening stages of the 19-lap sprint, with Max Verstappen and Yuki Tsunoda picking off the Aston Martin of Fernando Alonso at the start, but their performance faded as the race went on.
The duo still managed to pick up valuable points for the Milton Keynes-based team, albeit Verstappen lost some points to Norris in the championship fight.
Despite his strong performance in the sprint qualifying and the 100km dash, Tsunoda’s weekend took a negative spiral as he exited the main qualifying at the first time of asking.
Max Verstappen made Q3 in a car that finally looked more balanced, but he did not have the pace to fight with the McLarens for pole tonight. However, he still secured P3 on the grid which could be a good starting place for him to take on the fight against the McLaren drivers.
Commenting on his performance on Saturday, Verstappen noted: “It was a tough start to the weekend with the Sprint as we were not entirely happy with the behaviour of the car. We were a bit off the pace and, although we got a good start, there was still a bit of work to do with the car.
"In Qualifying, the performance of the car was better; there were a few limitations, including understeer, which this track can highlight, but we still maximised our performance. Before the session, we changed a few things with the car and make the most out of it with our prep.
"Overall, I’m pretty happy with P3 and we will see what we can do in the race. Hopefully we can have a strong day tomorrow and you never know what can happen around here, there are a lot of medium speed corners which we can tend to struggle with, but it will also be about looking after our tyres.
Due to the tyre woes in recent Qatar Grands Prix, Pirelli has elected that every set of tyres supplied to the teams at the start of the race weekend can cover a maximum of 25 laps of the Lusail track. The laps will be counted cumulatively across all track sessions, including laps run under the Safety Car or Virtual Safety Car.
"The two-stop strategy can work for you or against you, but we will find out tomorrow. On race day, the most important thing will be to try and have a good start.
"We might struggle to stay with the McLarens, but you never know what can happen, we will try everything that we can," concluded Verstappen.
