Lando Norris already seemed to be a sure pole-sitter for the sprint in Austin, but once again Max Verstappen struck back at the crucial moment. The world champion secured the best time with a lead of just 0.071 seconds and relegated Norris to second place.
“Of course I would have loved to be on pole,” admits the McLaren driver. “Still, overall I’m happy. I don’t know exactly how much I was missing, but there were probably a few little things here and there that I could have done better.”
What was missing in the end for pole in the sprint? “I hit a few bumps unluckily, that’s just the difficulty of this route,” Norris explains to Sky UK. “Aside from that, I’m happy with the result.”
“If you ask most drivers whether they feel comfortable in the first sector with all the bumps, they would probably answer no,” grins the 25-year-old Brit. “Here you just have to accept that it never really feels comfortable – that’s probably the trick.”
“Overall, my laps were decent and I improved steadily,” says Norris. “It’s easy to hit a bump at the wrong angle or accelerate a little too much – and you’ll lose a few hundredths. No drama, but of course I would have liked to have been a little faster.”
Verstappen strikes in the last corner
Verstappen added that the duel was “pretty close across all sections of the route”. “It was a matter of bringing everything together at the crucial moment. That’s not easy when you’re on the soft tires in the last attempt, with no real reference. But it worked well.”
But even Red Bull probably didn’t expect a pole. “In Q1 and Q2 we were one to one and a half tenths behind McLaren,” team boss Laurent Mekies told Sky UK. “We knew it would be on a knife edge.”
“Lando drove a very strong lap in Q3 and it initially looked difficult to beat that,” admits Mekies. “Max was line to line with him for most of the lap, but in the final corners he threw the car in with incredible courage and found exactly the tiny gap we needed for pole.”
This is also confirmed by the telemetry data from F1 Tempo: Both drivers were almost on par for long stretches of the lap, with Norris slightly ahead in several sections and even able to gain a clear lead at times. But Verstappen countered at the crucial moment.
In the last corner, the Dutchman braked a little later, took more speed into the apex and thus made up the crucial time. Norris had the better exit from the corner, but Verstappen’s advantage was too great to catch up with him on the short stretch to the measuring line.
Verstappen “trying something crazy”
“On this lap you almost had the feeling that he was going to try something crazy in the last corner – and that’s exactly what he did,” confirms Mekies. “Of course he doesn’t have any data about Lando’s lap, but he threw the car into the last corners and got exactly the small lead that was decisive in the end.”
“He actually manages to surprise us every time he gets in the car. It’s impressive. You can see how much work he puts in behind the scenes to be able to achieve this level of performance – it doesn’t happen by chance. It’s great for the team to have a driver like him and today it paid off again.”
But Verstappen’s courageous final attack was apparently not the only reason. “The decisive factor was that we found a risky but very successful coordination,” reveals Red Bull consultant Helmut Marko on Sky and adds: “Max was incredible again in Sector 3.”
That’s exactly where he made the difference. “When it comes down to it, he always gains a bit,” although the start of his lap wasn’t perfect, Marko emphasizes: “So coming out of Turn 1 he was wide, but still faster. Normally that’s on the tires.”
Glock praises Verstappen: “An unbelievable calm”
But in the end the Red Bull driver didn’t let that bother him. “As soon as Max has a car that he can build on, he can simply implement it again and again,” adds Sky expert Timo Glock. “And that was shown again today in qualifying.”
“He does this very cleverly by lining up the segments and timing them so optimally and he has an unbelievable calmness with which he does it. That’s the advantage,” praises the former Formula 1 driver, who speaks of a level of perfection that no one else in the field would be able to achieve.
“And it doesn’t matter where you put it, whether it’s a GT3 car on the Nordschleife or the Formula 1 car here,” Glock also recalls Verstappen’s victory at the Nürburgring. “He is simply an incredible driving talent and he shows it again and again every weekend.”
Piastri self-critical: “Just not brought together properly”
And Piastri? The World Championship leader was relatively slow, 0.38 seconds behind, and played no role in the battle for pole. Where did the McLaren driver lose his time? “In several places, to be honest. Overall, it was a pretty turbulent round.”
“I just didn’t get them together properly,” Piastri admits. “In a way I can be happy that it was still enough for third place. The pace in the car is good, it wasn’t a catastrophic day, just a bit of a rough lap that I [am Samstag] Hopefully can improve.”
Team boss Andrea Stella also draws a mixed conclusion. “I think it’s a good result, but not quite what we wanted, because of course we’re here to get on pole,” admits the Italian. “But it is a solid starting point for the sprint race.”
The pole is much more important for the race on Sunday anyway, and there too Stella sees the result of the sprint qualifying as “a good basis to see where we can still fine-tune the performance [am Samstag] to be able to fight for pole again.”