Verstappen hails Monza pole as key breakthrough

Max Verstappen described his pole position at the Italian Grand Prix as a big result for Red Bull, given the team’s struggles at the same venue last year.

Red Bull entered the Italian Grand Prix weekend with Verstappen leading the championship comfortably, but the Dutchman was 0.7s off pole position as he qualified seventh and finished over half a minute behind race winner Charles Leclerc in sixth. After taking pole with the fastest lap in Formula 1 history this time around, Verstappen says it shows clear progress compared to last year’s struggles.

“It was good,” Verstappen said. “It's always tough around here. Low downforce, easy to make mistakes on the braking or on entries because you have to commit, but with low downforce, that's not always easy. Also, you know, the closing speeds in certain corners to hit the apex perfectly. But I think that final lap was pretty decent.

“To get pole here for us is big. It's not always been a good track for us, especially last year was quite a bit of a disaster. So this year is much better and very happy to be first.”

• Italian GP qualifying report

Verstappen says some of the progress is a result of developments to the Red Bull car itself, but says that isn’t the only aspect that has improved, as he also warns that race pace hasn’t always followed strong qualifying performances.

“I think we’re making improvements on the car, but also, setup-wise we found a nicer direction," he said. "We still need to understand more why in the race sometimes it doesn’t really translate. I had quite a decent feeling in Zandvoort, but then it was really not good in the race.

“So I don’t sit here and think that tomorrow is going to be fantastic in terms of how competitive we’re going to be against McLaren. The whole season has shown that yes, sometimes you can be in front in qualifying, but in the race it’s very tough to stay ahead, sometimes on tracks maybe where it’s difficult to pass.

“Here you can race. I expect it to be a tough battle, but we are making steps forward, and that’s exactly what we want to do. We want to learn a bit more that hopefully also helps us next year.”