Max Verstappen said the fight for pole position was wide open in qualifying for the Brazilian Grand Prix before a sudden change in weather hit the track.
The Red Bull driver took his 11th pole position of the season at Interlagos. However he did not head Q1 or Q2 and the lap times between the top drivers were consistently close. Less than four tenths of a second covered the entire top 10 in Q2.The weather conditions changed dramatically at the beginning of Q3 as a huge storm arrived. Verstappen responded to the challenge best, taking pole position by almost three tenths of a second from Charles Leclerc.
But without that change, Verstappen says the competition for pole position would have been fierce.
“The gaps were just very, very close,” he said. “I think we were quite competitive so I think no one really knew who was going to be first in Q3 if it would have been a normal session without the weather incoming.
“That makes it quite interesting for Sunday as well to see how everything will evolve with the long-run pace.”
The closeness of the times meant drivers had to keep putting new sets of tyres on their cars in a bid to improve.
“I didn’t even have a lap on a soft tyre,” Verstappen explained. “So naturally in Q1 there’s always a bit more margin in your lap time, and it was extremely tight so if you didn’t do a good lap, you were out. So that’s why I think many people put like two sets [of tyres] or even three sets, some of them. That just continued through the qualifying.
“There was always this threat of rain. But I think in Q1 and Q2, it was quite clear that it was still not happening. But because of the pace of everyone else you were forced to put new tyres on basically.”
Verstappen also wasn’t entirely happy with the balance of his car and reported at the start of Q1 that it was “jumping like a kangaroo” on the bumps.
“It was a bit difficult over the bumps,” he admitted. “I don’t know why that was the case because we didn’t really [change] the car.
“So we need to understand that because on the bumps it was not very comfortable. But we tried to work our way around it.”
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