‘Pure joy’: Suns veteran’s fairytale finish in epic final<\/a><\/p>\n![](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/c637b108a3d9cebdb8a95aadaa0dc94744e7c4c6.jpeg\")
<\/p>\n
Max Verstappen races around the Monza track\u00a0NurPhoto via Getty Images<\/p>\n
Four-time world champion Verstappen raced around the 5.79km of asphalt at the so-called Temple of Speed in a time of 1 minute, 18.792 seconds, almost a tenth of a second quicker than the one-lap record set by Lewis Hamilton five years ago.<\/p>\n
Formula 1 officially touted it as the fastest lap in history by average speed.<\/p>\n
Charles Leclerc – who won at Monza last year and in 2019 – qualified in fourth for Ferrari at the Italian Scuderia\u2019s home race, just ahead of teammate Hamilton.<\/p>\n
Leclerc had briefly topped the standings early in Q3 to loud cheers from the Ferrari fans – matched by groans from the passionate red-clad tifosi when Verstappen went faster.<\/p>\n
Verstappen has been on pole position 44 times but just once at the Italian Grand Prix, where he has triumphed twice.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was tight, we were still lacking a tiny amount and we made some final changes which I think allowed me to push a bit more,” he said.<\/p>\n
“That\u2019s exactly what you need in qualifying. For us, it\u2019s a great moment.<\/p>\n
![](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/40f4526ef811f6fb40b96f6f94dad8fd95d66da7.jpeg\")
<\/p>\n
Max Verstappen\u00a0Getty<\/p>\n
\u201cHistorically this season the race has always been a little bit more complicated for us, but we are going to give it everything we have.<\/p>\n
“That\u2019s the only thing we can do and then we will see what happens tomorrow.”<\/p>\n
It is a 45th pole position for Verstappen and a fifth this season, although only one of his two wins this year has come from the front of the grid.<\/p>\n
He will be joined on the front row by Norris, who trails Piastri by 34 points in the championship with nine races left of the season.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It takes something special to beat McLaren this year and that’s what Max Verstappen produced on Sunday morning…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":124196,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[572],"tags":[64,63,806,805,803,804,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-124195","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-motosport","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-motor","11":"tag-motor-sports","12":"tag-motosport","13":"tag-motosports","14":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/124195","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=124195"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/124195\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/124196"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=124195"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=124195"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=124195"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}