Max Verstappen admitted that the lap which secured him pole position for the Miami sprint race “felt pretty terrible”.
The Red Bull driver claimed the prime spot for Saturday’s sprint race by a tenth of a second from Charles Leclerc but was visibly battling with his car at times throughout his pole-winning lap.
Verstappen suffered a snap of oversteer at the exit of the chicane, which cost him a tenth compared to the Ferrari driver. He held on to take pole position but admitted to race engineer Gianpiero Lambiase after the session that his car felt “terrible”.
Speaking after the session, Verstappen said his car’s handling had changed dramatically from the earlier practice session into the sprint qualifying.
“To be honest with you, it felt pretty terrible,” he said.
Many other drivers said they found the track conditions difficult at the end of qualifying, as they switched from the medium tyre compound to softs.
“Maybe that last session was just incredibly difficult to get the tyres to work because already in SQ2 I didn’t feel great,” said Verstappen. “In SQ3, I think it just felt quite similar for me. I didn’t really improve a lot on the softs, but somehow we were first.
“Of course, I’ll happily take it, but it didn’t really feel enjoyable out there to drive for whatever reason. In practice it felt really, really nice. I was very comfortable and confident. Qualifying not so much.”
Verstappen’s pole time was not the fastest time in qualifying, which was claimed by Lando Norris in SQ2 on the medium compound. With the top ten covered by just over eight tenths of a second, Verstappen admitted he was a little surprised to have ended up on pole.
“It might be the track layout a little bit,” he said.
“I thought after practice I was quite confident that we could really fight for pole. Then in qualifying, it didn’t really look like that for me, but somehow we still ended up in first. I don’t know what happened to the other cars on the last lap.”
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2024 Miami Grand Prix
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