Max Verstappen thought he’d spoiled the lap which gave him pole position at the first corner.
Lando Norris held provisional pole position before the final laps began in Q3, but Verstappen beat him to the top spot by over half a second. This was despite an error at the first corner which left him concerned he would not continue his run of home pole positions.“I started the lap, I went into turn one and I thought ‘that’s it’, said Verstappen. “I braked way too late.
“So probably my turn one wasn’t fantastic, but I think the rest of the lap was okay. I felt okay with the car.”
The session began on a wet track which dried as no further rain fell. As parts of the track surface were they did more recently than others, Verstappen said this made grip levels variable and hard to judge.
“It was quite slippery out there so it was easy to make a mistake or whatever. Especially on the new Tarmac, sector one, sector three was quite slippery.
“Especially on the intermediates in the beginning to get the temperature in and get going was a bit difficult. You had to do a few laps to get into a rhythm and have the tyres up to temperature.”
It took until Q3 for the track to dry out enough for drivers to switch to slick tyres, though Verstappen admitted he “initially didn’t think it was going to be dry enough” to discard their intermediates.
“I think with the wind around here and then the sun coming out, it actually dried faster than I expected,” he said. “So I went out on the inter and quickly realised that was the wrong tyre so we boxed and put the slick on.”
Q3 was disrupted by crashes for Logan Sargeant and Charles Leclerc. “It was still very tricky conditions in turn one and two at the time, only one proper dry line, so it’s easy to make a mistake,” said Verstappen. “Then of course we had a bit of a delay, and also Charles had his moment, so at one point the dry line was becoming a bit wider so that helped a bit.
“But then again you have to really get a bit out of your comfort zone in that final lap because it’s still not entirely dry everywhere. But luckily the lap was good.”
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2023 Dutch Grand Prix
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