vowing to go \u201call in\u201d<\/a>, as he looks to close a 24-point deficit to McLaren\u2019s Lando Norris in the race for the 2025 Drivers\u2019 title, but his weekend has started in less-than-ideal circumstances.<\/p>\nFollowing a tricky sole practice session, Verstappen could not get a handle on his Red Bull through the Sprint grid-decider, complaining of severe bouncing, understeer and taking a wild trip over the gravel in SQ3.<\/p>\n
Reflecting on his evening at the wheel, Verstappen sighed: \u201cYeah, not good. From the first lap, just really bad bouncing and very aggressive understeer that would shift into oversteer in high-speed, so just not what you want to go fast.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou\u2019re locked in [with set-up for the Sprint race]\u2026 We tried to of course change a few things on the wheel, but it never really worked, so that made it quite tricky.<\/p>\n
\u201c[We changed] a few things [after FP1], but it clearly wasn\u2019t working well in Qualifying, so that\u2019s something that we need to understand.\u201d<\/p>\n
Asked about his chances in the Sprint and for the rest of the event, with set-up changes permitted after the 100-kilometre dash, the Dutchman added: \u201cWith this balance tomorrow in the Sprint, at least, it will not be a lot of fun.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt will be more about just trying to survive, I guess, and then make some changes going into Qualifying.\u201d<\/p>\n
Yuki Tsunoda, meanwhile, pulled an unexpected performance out of the bag by qualifying fifth fastest, just ahead of Verstappen, after a difficult run of events in the sister Red Bull.<\/p>\n
Asked about the apparent breakthrough, Tsunoda said: \u201cI mean, so far it\u2019s been a clean race weekend, pretty smooth, not any issues happening in practice, and this Qualifying so far.<\/p>\n
\u201cI felt more confidence [going] into the Qualifying. It\u2019s good. It\u2019s good that we had a clean race week so far.<\/p>\n
\u201cI just have to put it all together\u2026 There\u2019s three more sessions to go, but I\u2019m sure especially this now is very important for the team, especially for Max [and the Drivers\u2019 Championship battle].<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s good that both sides of the garage are very focused, and we try to give ourselves the maximum. Also for me as well, I\u2019m happy with the car and with my confidence.<\/p>\n
\u201cObviously there\u2019s some bit to go for tomorrow, to find that extra little bit of tenths, but I\u2019m excited.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A frustrated Max Verstappen is preparing himself for a \u201csurvival\u201d Sprint race at the Lusail International Circuit, having…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":315372,"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-315371","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\/315371","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=315371"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/315371\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/315372"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=315371"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=315371"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=315371"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}