Max Verstappen was disappointed with third place in qualifying. Daniel Ricciardo was the last teammate to beat him during qualifying, but Sergio Perez ended this run, coming in fractionally faster and taking second spot on the grid.
Verstappen also revealed that during the Emilia Romagna GP build up, he faced problems with his car.
In light of this, his win in Imola is all the more praiseworthy.
“Yesterday didn’t go very well. We also found a problem with the car. Hopefully that will be fixed. All those things obviously don’t help, but we need to do better today,” he said.
“The car has potential and it is very fast. We just have to see. It’s also getting a bit darker now, so we’ll see what the weather does.”
The team ended up losing a lot of time on the track due to Verstappen’s car problems on Friday. This meant that they were unable to go for longer runs.
“The goal is of course to win. I know it’s difficult to overtake here, but we have a good car for the race. We didn’t do any long runs in FP2, but I expect it will be fine.”
Verstappen was then able to put Saturday’s result into perspective.
“Yesterday was not optimal. Not a good lap myself and then also the problem we found, which luckily has been solved for today. I do think we have the potential to have a good race, so hopefully we can do something this afternoon,” said Verstappen.
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