Max Verstappen Took Pole Position for Australian Grand Prix

Even though it was a more difficult weekend, achieving pole position today was great. I didn’t really expect to make it on pole, but we kept on making steady improvements throughout qualifying and I felt able to push a little bit better. Over the weekend, we have been struggling with the graining and have had a lot of things to figure out, but we just needed to keep on fine tuning the car with the Team. The balance of the car got better throughout; as we went through the session it felt easier to manage and I'm very happy with the laps we did in Q3 and surprised myself. We obviously had all the information from Q1 and Q2 and I think we achieved two very good laps. It is a bit of an unknown tomorrow as it is always easy to make a mistake here and it is harder to manage the tyres. Although the weekend has been a bit tough for us and I don’t think tomorrow will be an easy race, to still be on pole with the difficulties that we had is something we can be very proud of.

It was quite tricky out there; I think that soft tyre was making things very difficult for us and getting up to speed on that set is quite hard but in the end it really worked well and we were able to extract the maximum from the tyre. I didn’t get the maximum from my final lap and lost a tenth at turn one, I think P2 was achievable, but I am still pleased with P3, I am on the clean side of the grid and can fight from there. This is a good starting point, I am confident, I want to get a strong start and get Carlos off the line. The degradation is a lot higher than last year here, it will be a challenge with Ferrari and it will come down to strategy and management of the tyres. Hopefully we get the result we want, that would be very nice for the Team.

I’m very happy with the performance of the team and myself. Definitely a big credit to them for giving me a very consistent car throughout the weekend. It’s been easier to adapt and build confidence in every session, so I definitely feel like I had a clean lap, was able to squeeze a few milliseconds from each corner, and maximised the performance. I didn’t expect P8, and especially Q3 after seeing Williams and other teams find more time in Q1, but I’m very happy; it’s the highest qualifying position this season and reflects the hard work of the team. Daniel was also looking quick so it’s a bit of a shame what happened, but let’s see how it goes tomorrow. It won’t be easy, but we aim to have a clean race, do as much as we can, and score points!

I knew in Turn 4 I was sliding and fighting to put the car on the limit, and in that lap, I washed a little bit wider. I knew I used more kerb than I wanted on the exit, but I wasn’t sure whether it would be off track or not. I had already forgotten about it by Turn 5 and 6 until I came into the garage and Pierre told me the lap was deleted. The team put in a big effort after the weekend in Saudi and we also brought some new parts here which looked better. When I crossed the line, I felt like I gave it all I had and got all I could out of it. I was happy with the lap but I’m a little skeptical because of where we are in terms of the stopwatch, as we were still slow with that lap. I have done enough laps in quali over the years to know where I am, and I think we’re still missing some things. We’ve been facing some struggles all weekend, but it’s not anything in particular; I feel the car and I’m comfortable with it, with the balance and the braking and that's why the grid position is really painful. Tomorrow will be a long race, probably it’s a two-stop one, so perhaps this will give us a bit more opportunities. I feel like I’ve got a little bit of my anger out of something, so probably something in my driver room will get broken and then I’ll feel better.