Max Verstappen said he is unsure how competitive his Red Bull will be over a race distance in the Japanese Grand Prix after taking pole position for the race.
He scored a comfortable victory in last year’s race, almost 20 seconds ahead of nearest rival Lando Norris. However the race is expected to run in cooler conditions this year following its move to an earlier time slot and teams had less running than usual in practice after rain fell on Friday.
After extending his unbeaten run in qualifying so far this year Verstappen said he “I haven’t been happy with my long runs” so far this weekend. “The pace wasn’t what I would have liked.
“So it’s a bit of a question mark going into tomorrow because looking at the long runs, especially Ferrari, they look very comfortable. Maybe they were not so quick over one lap today, but they were definitely fast in the long run. So we’ll have to wait and see how that will evolve tomorrow in the race.”
Verstappen narrowly beat Sergio Perez to pole position after making a slight mistake on his final lap, which allowed his team mate to come within six-hundredths of a second of beating him to pole position. “I started to lose time from turn 13 [Spoon curve] onwards,” he explained.
“It’s very sensitive around here with the tyres. As soon as you push maybe a bit too hard in sector one, you run out of tyres at the end, and that’s what happened to me in my final lap. So that’s why I didn’t really improve a lot.
“Also, my last chicane, because the front tyres were giving up, I didn’t hit the kerb how it should have been. That wasn’t ideal, but it was still good enough. Of course, I always want it to be perfect, but that’s not possible. Luckily, it was still good enough today.”
However he still relished his final flying laps around one of his favourite circuits. “Around here in Suzuka it’s always very nice when the fuel comes out, the balance is more or less there and then you can push flat out. It’s always very, very nice.
“Of course with the cars improving every single year, it makes it even better, especially the high speed. It feels really, really cool.”
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2024 Japanese Grand Prix
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