Verstappen is P2, Ricciardo is P5 in the Canadian GP Qualifying

I’m happy to be on the front row for tomorrow’s race and it was certainly more than I thought was possible after FP3. We always knew this track was going to be a bit more tricky than others and it seems that a lot of the teams are catching up. Today it was about managing the tyres with the graining, but if you look at the pace we did well and improved nicely every run. We tried to do the best we can and just need to make sure we have a cleaner weekend as we have been slightly on the back foot. Looking to tomorrow, I think it will come down to the weather and tyre behaviour. The rain will make it more interesting, especially with the tarmac making it more slippery, the chicanes and the close walls. It has been a difficult weekend, but considering everything we definitely maximised the result in qualifying and I am looking forward to tomorrow.

I’m very pleased about today. It’s been a really good weekend, a lot of fun, and one of those ones where everything’s just feeling good. We are less than two-tenths from pole, and even if it’s not today’s case, sometimes this means being on the front row, so it’s nice being competitive and feeling comfortable in the car. In Q3 it was very important to have a fast warm-up lap and this is what I told the team. I did it and then had the right confidence for the push lap. It was nice to put the lap together, but I’m not surprised, I know when I feel like this, I can do these things. I’m happy that I was able to get it out of myself, but happy and credit to the team, both cars going into Q3 and happy to reward them with a very nice result. I always feel something special coming here to Montréal and I’ve got good memories: exactly ten years ago I got my first win here and my life changed. Also, the team feels there’s some good energy this weekend, so happy to convert that into some good driving. Tomorrow, we start in a good spot inside the top 5, with some good front-running guys around me, so I’ll get the best out of myself during the race.

As you can see in the result, the team did a fantastic job, and it was a successful day for us. For myself, considering I was struggling in Free Practice, it was a very good turnaround for qualifying. I had an unfortunate gust of wind in Turn 2 and lost a lot of lap time there, but still, another Q3 is not bad. So far, it’s been an enjoyable race weekend, with many ups and downs which have challenged me, but at the same time, if we can turn it around to this it’s always a good feeling, and that’s credit to the team. We’ll see how it goes with the weather tomorrow, but we have a good car and obviously want more points in the bag, so we aim to finish in the top ten with both cars.

In these conditions somehow, we weren’t able to switch on the rear axle, I couldn’t lean on it at all and I didn’t have any confidence at the time to push. Basically, I had no grip, I was sliding too much and that meant our qualifying was a total disaster. We need to look at it and understand the reason behind it, it was stepping away from me all the time. In hindsight we could have done a lot of different things but at the end of the day we lacked some pace, simple as that. There are some fundamental issues that we need to address, understand, and figure out, to make sure we are able to improve in the coming races. I am angry with myself; we are a Team and it is not an ideal time for us but we have full focus on tomorrow and hopefully we are able to save something and score some points. The weather can hopefully help us, it can make things unpredictable, and we will see what we can do with the strategy as well.