Verstappen makes the difference: 'Shouldn't have been on the front row'

"I'm very happy. I do think that in the first practice we were quite a bit off. So I'm very happy to be on the front row, honestly," said Verstappen to F1TV after the sprint qualifying. "The lap was very good. It's always very tough when you go from a medium to a soft, to nail the lap with no references.

"Of course, when you look at it like it was 18 one thousandths [of a second] or something of pole, but I don't think we should have even been on the front row anyway. So I'm very happy to be second," added the Dutchman.

'Red Bull are struggling for pace'

What changed between FP1 and sprint qualifying? "Nothing dramatic, because I don't think the balance is massively off. It's just too slow, I would say. But this is good for us. It's a little motivation boost, I think, as well, for everyone. We keep nailing the laps, we keep trying to maximise everything that we got. And you need to do that as well, at the same time when you're maybe struggling a little bit more for pace."

While McLaren drivers, Oscar Piastri and Lando Norris were the favourites to take pole, Verstappen ultimately beat them both. The Dutchman is overperforming yet again? "Yeah, I mean it's always very hard to say, but I was happy with what I was doing there in qualifying," replies Verstappen modestly.

McLaren are still a threat that Verstappen is very much aware of. "I think they looked very fast up until that last run, so I think it will be very hard to keep them behind, but hopefully it will be fun. We are all, I wouldn't say close, but at least we can race a bit around. That would that would be nice for me," concluded Verstappen.