Max Verstappen had an up-and down weekend so far: his second free practice session stopped after a few laps because of technical issues, not allowing him to test his race pace, but he managed to end this morning's free practice on top of the timetable. 

The Red Bull driver finished the qualifying session with a 0.087 seconds delay off Lewis Hamilton's pole position, 0.052 seconds behind his teammate Sergio Perez, which marks the first time since 2018 he's been out qualified by a teammate.

However, he wasn't impressed with his driving in the last laps and he'll start tomorrow's race in P3, next to Charles Leclerc, because of a mistake made in Turn 3, as he told Davide Valsecchi after the end of the session: “Yeah, not so good in Q3, I went off in Turn 3 so a bit messy. Not a good lap, but you can’t be good every time so we’ll see what went wrong but it was definitely not the easiest in Q3. But still P3 which is a good starting position."

Verstappen also added that he didn't have any particular problem during the previous sessions, and that he just couldn't put in a better lap:

“[The car] felt alright in FP3, and just in qualifying you change tyres from soft to medium, try to put your lap in and it was all coming along nicely. But then in Q3 on the final run I just didn’t have a good lap. I went off at Turn 3 with two wheels, I know that Honda makes good lawnmowers but I don’t think this one was suited for that! But at least I tried.", ended with a laugh

“It has been going really well for a very long time, but unfortunately we are not robots! I can’t program myself like that. But sometimes it happens, you make a mistake." 

He didn't know, at that moment, the particular reason of his "scrappy" lap, but believes tomorrow's race to be interesting for his team, having two cars in the top three positions on different strategies:“It was just a really scrappy lap, I haven’t had that in a long time so just need to understand why that happened. But nevertheless I think we were very close so that’s positive, and like Checo said we have two cars close to Lewis on different tyres so hopefully that will get some excitement tomorrow.”

Verstappen looks forward to the upcoming battle with the Mercedes, especially since he'll start on medium compound tyres, while his teammate will sport soft tyres:“It’s going to be interesting. Of course we have the two cars on different tyres so let’s see how that will work out, but we’ll try and make it difficult for them [Mercedes].”

He also thinks that rain might add a twist to the race, and hopes to see another close fight for the victory, as it was in Bahrain: "Of course we have to wait and see what’s going to happen tomorrow but it’s going to be interesting what can be done. Not only with that but also what the weather is going to do, if there is a bit of rain or not, so I guess we just have to wait and see what’s going to happen. But hopefully in the race it will be close again.”

🗣 "Checo did a great job so congratulations to him. We have a good race car and tomorrow is where you score points." @Max33Verstappen on #ImolaGP qualifying 🇮🇹 pic.twitter.com/A1TB9GH7K8

— Red Bull Racing Honda (@redbullracing) April 17, 2021

 

A bit messy Q3, lost out in turn 3. Still, P3 is a good starting position for the race. All to play for tomorrow, looking forward to it 👊 #KeepPushing 🇮🇹 #ImolaGP pic.twitter.com/KvIlfB2wit

— Max Verstappen (@Max33Verstappen) April 17, 2021