Fifth place in qualifying for Max Verstappen, who limited the damage by driving beyond the car’s limits, while Sergio Perez qualified sixteenth.
Max Verstappen once again keeps Red Bull afloat, which is struggling on the streets of Las Vegas. The three-time world champion secured fifth place in qualifying, nearly half a second behind Russell but ahead of Lando Norris, his only remaining title rival. Despite the limitations of his car, the Dutch driver continues to perform at a different level compared to Sergio Perez, who qualified sixteenth and is light years away from the top positions.
Verstappen, interviewed by the press, described his qualifying performance as follows. Max’s words: “In the long runs, both Lando and I degraded the tires early, maybe even sooner than others. Only time will tell how we will perform tomorrow. Certainly, our car was very difficult to drive; I would say the issue is related to the tires: it was really hard to get the tires to work in a lap or in a sector, which made it difficult to extract the maximum performance. I tried to do my best, but we were lacking grip and top speed due to the rear wing.
I knew this before the start of qualifying, and I tried to maximize the result. Lando is behind me, but we want to do better than fifth place. Both long runs didn’t go well for different reasons. I’m not sure they’ll be great tomorrow, but maybe I’ll be surprised.”
The expectations for the race aren’t very high, but Super Max doesn’t want to settle for fifth place: “We don’t have the specific wing designed for Monza and Las Vegas. It’s something we decided to do from the beginning for budget reasons. Maybe it’s something we need to reconsider, because it seems like it’s not very efficient to race this way. It’s also true that there’s only one year left with these regulations, so perhaps it doesn’t even make sense to do it.
In the last two qualifying sessions, we left a few tenths on the table. But aside from that, we’ve tried to do our best as a team. I really think we’ve worked well together. We’ve tried a lot of different things to understand the right direction. I think we found it, but it wasn’t enough to fight for pole.”
Photo: X Red Bull Racing F1 Team
