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Verstappen reflects on his near crash in Abu Dhabi: 'It was quite spicy!'
- Nicole Mulder
After another difficult start in Abu Dhabi, Red Bull Racing managed to make a solid move forward from Friday to Saturday. Max Verstappen's first Q3 lap was good despite a heart-stopping moment at the final corner. He failed to improve in his second run and will provisionally start from fifth. At the front of the grid, Lando Norris took pole position. Speaking to GPblog and others, the Dutchman looks back on his last Formula 1 qualifying of the year.
Verstappen: 'I thought this could be quite spicy'
In his first run in Q3, Verstappen briefly looked like he was going to end up in the wall, but he managed to recover superbly and still finish his lap well. It made for spectacular footage, with the Dutchman reacting as chilled as ever. "Yeah, I thought at one point I was facing towards the wall, I was like, this can be quite spicy, but of course, it's not quick," he explained to written media at the Yas Marina Circuit, including GPblog.
The Dutchman then reflected on Red Bull's weekend so far. The 24th and final race weekend of 2024 hasn't been the easiest for the Milton Keynes-based team. "I think the whole weekend, we've never found that sweet spot, unfortunately. Maybe we looked quite okay in Q1 and Q2, but most of the time, people were aborting their laps on new tyres. And then, every time at the beginning of a session, people behind me were on scrubbed tyres when I put new, and then Q3, it was okay but just not how I liked it. The car was never really planted, always a bit difficult in some corners and that made it very difficult to be consistent," Verstappen said.
Just like in Qatar, Red Bull managed to make a move on the night from Friday to Saturday, but today it was less strongly reflected in the results. "They did a good job overnight. I think we did make the right adjustments it's just sometimes you know track layout is a bit different. We know that we are good in the medium to very high speed because here you also have some low-speed corners and it's more like medium to low speed, so that's always been a bit more our weakness. I think we have improved in that area but we still have some things to improve on." The four-time world champion concluded.
This article was written in collaboration with Toby Nixon
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