Mexico City front row 'an incredible result' for Verstappen

Max Verstappen describes his front row qualifying position at the Mexico City Grand Prix as “an incredible result” for Red Bull after his troublesome Friday.

FP2 saw Verstappen complete just four laps and fail to set a time as a power unit problem ended his running early, having already impacted the first session. The championship leader bounced back to beat main rival Lando Norris and secure second on the grid behind Carlos Sainz, and he says it was an extremely unexpected result given his car’s performance.

“Yesterday I did like four laps, two laps on lower fuel, and two laps on high fuel,” Verstappen said. “It was basically just a complete write-off, no information. So for me FP3 was very crucial, tried to do as many laps as I could. We were behind, the car was not feeling great and everything was just very difficult.

“I knew it was going to be a tough qualifying, but we made some final adjustments and it all started to feel better. But to be on the front row is I think an incredible result for us.

“I barely did any laps, so it could only go better, really. We were massively on the back foot. So far it has been a terrible weekend in that sense, but to be on the front row with the difficulties that we had I think showed that we stayed calm and just tried to look into the data to try and understand the car a bit more and try to just be a little bit more competitive.”

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Verstappen admits his long run pace is a major area of uncertainty due to his lack of running, and he’s expecting a challenge from both Ferrari and McLaren.

“Yeah, it is. I don’t expect miracles," he said. "I think [in] Austin, Ferrari was really, really fast. Of course maybe that weekend McLaren was not as strong, but then in the race I think they were still competitive, so from my side I don’t know, I guess we’ll find out tomorrow.”

Starting from the front row, Verstappen is only likely to be able to get a slipstream from Sainz on the long run to Turn 1 but he says the track layout doesn’t alter his tactics from other races.

“It just depends where you start and what happens in front of you," he said. "I think I’ve been in a lot of different starting positions around here! It’s a long run, anything can happen, but I don’t really think about it too much.”