The epic battle for F1 driving supremacy continues in Austin on Sunday.
AUSTIN, Texas—Max Verstappen might have shown disappointment on Friday practice regarding his performance for Sunday’s United States Grand Prix, but the Dutchman regained his composure on Saturday to take his eighth pole in the last nine races. He clocked a last-second, fasted time of 1:32:910 and finished ahead of archrival Lewis Hamilton (Mercedes) and Red Bull teammate Sergio Perez.
Verstappen struggled early on, but he took the second session and set quick times throughout the last two sectors. Now, Verstappen and Hamilton–who have been locked in a season-long battle for the Driver’s Championship–will continue their battle on Sunday.
Verstappen: It was quite exciting out there. In Q3, my first lap wasn’t amazing but in the final lap, it started spitting, like a little drizzle in the last sector especially, so I wasn’t sure if I was going to hang onto my lap time, but it was enough.
When asked by former Indy Car and NASCAR driver Danica Patrick about being next to Hamilton on the front row, Verstappen felt said “I guess that’s what people like.”
Hamilton was disappointed he didn’t do better on Saturday, even apologizing to his team. “We struggled through qualifying and from P1 fell back a little bit. I was happy with the last lap, and we pretty much gave it everything we had. Hopefully, it’ll be a good race down to Turn One. My mindset is to win the race and give these guys (the crowd) the best race they’ve seen.”
Perez fell short of making it a Red Bull front row but knows tomorrow’s outcome is what counts. “Tomorrow is a very long race, and that’s why qualifying doesn’t really matter. There will be a lot of degradation on the tires but I’m looking forward to it.”
Besides the one-two Verstappen-Hamilton outcome, the biggest news of the day was lodged by Hamilton’s teammate Valtteri Bottas. He’ll start the race in ninth by way of receiving a penalty for an engine change. Otherwise, Bottas would have started in the fourth spot.
Early in the opening session, Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc headed the quickest time as Haas drivers, Nikita Mazepin and Mick Schumacher, and Alfa Romeo’s Kimi Raikkonen Aston Martin’s Lance Stroll, and Williams Nicholas Latifi, all exited. The Alpine duo of Fernando Alonso and Esteban Ocon, the second Aston Martin of Sebastian Vettel, George Russell of Williams, and Alfa Romeo’s Antonio Giovinazzi were the next group of drivers failing to advance to the final round.
Leclerc was one driver who continued, along with teammate Carlos Sainz Jr., and they placed fourth and fifth for the Scuderia. McLaren’s duo of Daniel Ricciardo and Lando Norris took sixth and seventh. Alpha Tauri was the third team that placed both cars in the top ten with Pierre Gasly eighth and Yuki Tsunoda finishing in tenth. It was Tsunoda’s best qualifying finish in quite some time.
You can watch all the action Sunday afternoon on ABC-TV starting at 3p Eastern time.
