Max Verstappen Took 6th for United States Grand Prix Qualifying

It was a shame to miss out on pole with my deleted lap but I knew in Turn 19 it would be a close call. I made a mistake in Turn One so I had to really push for the rest of the lap, I didn't understeer or anything, I just really tried to maximise the corner and I misjudged it. Margins are very fine when you are pushing to the limit. Of course, it's unfortunate but it makes the Sunday race more enjoyable. Now our focus turns to the Sprint race tomorrow, we want to win that and the race on Sunday. It's a long weekend and a lot can happen, I'm going to have some fun out there that's for sure.

It wasn’t a straightforward one out there today. I was struggling with the balance from low speed to high speed, especially in the low speed, we had made some changes that probably didn’t help us in the way we thought. The margins were so tight today that a tenth would have made your qualifying so different, but we are on the wrong side of it. Hopefully tomorrow we have a better Sprint Shootout and then get some points on the board, we are expecting some changes in the conditions, there will be a lot of wind around.

I’m happy with my performance, but I think that a minimal difference in my driving would’ve allowed me to get into Q3, so I feel frustrated. However, some teams in front of me have both their cars in the top 10, so I feel like we extracted the performance our car had today. P11 isn’t a bad position to start in on Sunday because it’s close to the points, so I’m looking forward to it. Our race pace this morning during FP1 didn’t look bad, so the potential is there for tomorrow and Sunday. It’s good to have Daniel back. It’s not easy to have one Free Practice session and immediately go into qualifying, because there’s not a lot of time to get up to speed, but he did a good job and has already given good feedback, and that’s why we were able to finish in P11.

It's good to be back. There was nothing physically holding me back today, so it was about finding the feeling in the car and the setup. It’s hard to predict what we could’ve done with only one hour in the car this morning and then straight into qualifying, but the last lap was already feeling a little poor. It’s difficult to only have one session where you have to set the car up for what it is for qualifying. It was a shame because we were fighting a little bit from the start, but as the track started to ramp up, we plateaued a little bit. I feel I could've given more, but we have another chance tomorrow, and the wind direction might change, so that can play a role. We’ll try and see what we can discover tonight, to learn from it for tomorrow. I wish I wasn’t starting P15, but it’s nice to be back behind the wheel and result aside, it’s been an enjoyable day.