Verstappen finally felt good again: 'The car was good too'

Digging into his memory, Verstappen says, to among others, GPblog: "Actually Austria, there the car was very good over one lap. And then the race not so. But that was actually the last time where I thought of: "Yeah, wow, that was pretty good". And now, the gap is obviously very small, but at least good enough to go for pole."

As Verstappen pointed out earlier, it was hard to put his finger on what had been done differently compared to the sprint race, in which the Dutchman had barely any speed. Overall, he pointed to "the setup" as the reason. So, such a big difference a probably small setup can make.

How do you get a grip on the car?

With the current generation of F1 cars, more teams struggle to get a grip on their car; sometimes top, sometimes not. What is the reason for that? "We change the setup and suddenly it goes a lot better. So there will also be some things in the setup sometimes, but also a lot in the tyres. To get those at the right temperature. Because for example, I only did one run, two laps. Then again, the others did two runs. There is a lot of difference in how you approach it sometimes," Verstappen responded to a question from GPblog.

Of course, the amount of fuel onboard also plays a role. In Q3, Verstappen obviously started his first run with more fuel than during his second run after two cool-down laps. "And actually, that time, what I found is then also what you lose in petrol," said Verstappen. He concluded, "I just don't like that. I think we just didn't expect it to matter so much. That can happen sometimes."