Windsor impressed: 'We saw Verstappen at the absolute limit!'
In Australia, Max Verstappen took his third pole position of the season. The Dutchman was the only one to score a time under 1:16. Peter Windsor said in his analysis on his YouTube channel that the three-time world champion came close to perfection.
Red Bull Racing seem to be facing a real challenge for the first time this season. For a long time, it seemed that Ferrari had a relatively good chance of securing pole position in Australia, but on the last lap in Q3, Verstappen grabbed the fastest time of the weekend, allowing the Dutchman to add another P1 finish to his qualifying statistics.
Windsor impressed with Verstappen
Windsor is therefore impressed with the Verstappen he saw in qualifying: "The first lap he did in Q3, from Max's point of view, was about as good as it could be, but he could never ever relax because Ferrari had been so good. Whenever he'd gone quickly at any point of the weekend, Ferrari had gazumped him. So he had to assume that was going to happen again. So we don't often see, I think, Max at absolute limit. And we saw that in the second run of Q3. Really good lap."
According to the Briton, Verstappen also did something special during his second lap: "It was a very, very good qualifying session. Really enjoyed it. It was always in doubt right to the end. And when Max, when somebody goes out and there's a barrier and it's a 1.16 barrier, and he does a 15.9, then you know it's a great lap. 15.8 wouldn't have been quite as dramatic in a way because, oh well, you know, the 15.8 was always there. But a 15.9 means he just had to get it perfect everywhere. Whether it was perfect everywhere, no, it wasn't perfect. A perfect lap has never been driven, has it? But Max was somewhere near it today."