Max Verstappen on Saturday claimed pole position for yesterday’s season-opening Bahrain Grand Prix with a flawless final lap in a tense qualifying session, beating defending champion Lewis Hamilton by three-tenths of a second.
The Dutchman grabbed the fourth pole position of his career for Red Bull with an emphatic demonstration of speed to deliver a first front row start alongside seven-time champion Hamilton in his Mercedes.
Verstappen clocked a best lap in one minute, 28.997 seconds to outpace Hamilton by 0.338 seconds, with Valtteri Bottas third in the second Mercedes.
Photo: AFP
“It’s looking good. Of course, it’s no guarantee for the rest of the season, but to start like this is really great. I haven’t experienced that at Red Bull, so I’m very happy with it,” the 23-year-old said.
“You can also see that the team got a bit of a lift after that win in Abu Dhabi,” he said, referring to the final race of last year. “That’s paying off now.”
Charles Leclerc was fourth for Ferrari ahead of Pierre Gasly of AlphaTauri and the McLarens of Daniel Ricciardo and Lando Norris.
Carlos Sainz was eighth in the second Ferrari ahead of two-time champion Fernando Alonso, on his return to F1 with the Alpine team, and Lance Stroll, who was 10th for Aston Martin.
Stroll’s new teammate, four-time champion Sebastian Vettel, struggled and qualified 18th, failing to make it out of Q1.
Hamilton, who showed much-improved speed compared to the pre-season test, congratulated his rival.
“He was so fast on that last lap. I gave it everything, but it wasn’t enough,” he said.
“There is always more, but that was the best I could do in getting it out of my car,” he added.
Hamilton also commented on Formula One’s revised aerodynamic regulations that he said were designed to “peg us back.”
“I mean it’s no secret that the changes, of course, they’ve been done to peg us back,” he said. “We had the changes, of course, last year — to our engine — to do the same thing.”
“But that’s OK. We love a challenge and we don’t look down on these things. We just work hard to do the best we can and that’s what we’ll do,” he added.
Bottas said he had no answer to give on the subject.
“I like aero stuff,” he said. “I’m a bit of a geek, in some ways. I like aerodynamics, I’m really interested, but I don’t know the facts.”
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