Max Verstappen Surprised By Miami Sprint Pole

Despite dominating the 2024 F1 season, championship leader Max Verstappen was surprised to take pole for the Miami Grand Prix Sprint Race on Saturday. Verstappen’s teammate Sergio Perez will start from third on the grid.

Max Verstappen

Position: 1, 1:27.641

“The practice session was really nice and I felt really confident and comfortable with the car. Honestly, I am quite surprised that we got P1 for the Sprint qualifying; it felt a bit different as I couldn’t really push or feel too confident on the tyres and get a nice balance on the car. On a track surface like this, it means that if you are a little bit out with the tyres it makes a big difference, but I think everyone else particularly struggled with the final run on the soft tyres. We have a few things to analyse and question why it felt a bit different from qualifying, but we should get it together fine for tomorrow. All in all, we have a great starting position for the Sprint and hopefully we can maximise this. Once the tyres stablilise, we should be back on track.”

Sergio Perez

Position: 3, 1:27.876

“It was a tricky session, we had one shot on that soft compound but we just didn’t maximise it and we got caught out a little bit with the grip, it changed here and there. Given that we only had a single go on that soft tyre it is down to a bit of luck about what the car is going to do. It is very challenging to go from just one practice into that session but it’s the same for everyone. I think the McLarens were the fastest cars out there, but they just couldn’t work it out on the soft compound. We have some work to do there and hopefully by tomorrow we can work it out. The aim will be to get as many points as possible in the Sprint and then we will go from there into the race. I think we are heading in the right direction and hopefully we can see a stronger race pace.”

Christian Horner

“It was a very good qualifying for us in the end and it looked for a while in Q2, on the medium tyre, that we weren’t potentially the strongest car. The wind was definitely a factor today but I think both drivers did a very good job and to line up first and third was more than we were expecting. You could hear the surprise in Max’s voice on the slowdown lap because he didn’t feel the lap had actually been good enough to capture the pole, it was just evident that everybody was struggling with the conditions. It all came good in the end and great to be starting on the front, first and third for tomorrow’s race, but still a lot to do.”