Max Verstappen believes that his P3 result in Sprint Qualifying at the British Grand Prix \u201ccould easily have been P6 or P7\u201d given the fine margins at play, with the Dutchman conceding that Red Bull still have \u201ca few things to figure out\u201d.<\/p>\n
Having ended the weekend\u2019s sole practice hour in P6 earlier on Friday \u2013 nearly one second off the pace of Ferrari<\/a>\u2019s Lewis Hamilton<\/a> at the top \u2013 Verstappen<\/a> looked to have closed the gap slightly in Sprint Qualifying later on, ending the session as the closest driver to Hamilton and Mercedes<\/a>\u2019 Kimi Antonelli<\/a> albeit with a deficit of just over three tenths.<\/p>\n Asked afterwards if he was happy to have made the top three \u2013 given where he had looked to be in FP1 \u2013 Verstappen answered: \u201cI think so, yeah. I mean, for us, the outcome of SQ3 was very close.<\/p>\n \u201cIt could easily have been P3 or whatever, P6 or P7. But we were on the good side, so we were a bit closer.<\/p>\n \u201cI think we\u2019re still not where we want to be \u2013 cornering, maybe a tiny bit, but also deployment and stuff, so a few things to figure out to try and find more lap time. But yeah, we\u2019ll try to do that, of course, after the Sprint.\u201d<\/p>\n Quizzed on whether the RB22 felt much better during Sprint Qualifying, the four-time World Champion said: \u201cA little bit better, yeah. Still not where I want it to be. I guess it\u2019s also just a combination of how the layout is now with some limitations on the straight, and just getting the balance in the right window.\u201d<\/p>\n Despite being the nearest to Hamilton and Antonelli on the grid for Saturday\u2019s Sprint, Verstappen played down his chances of being able to take the fight to the leading duo, whose respective team mates Charles Leclerc<\/a> and George Russell<\/a> will line up in fourth and fifth.<\/p>\n \u201cThey look a bit quick,\u201d Verstappen said of the front row. \u201cAnd I mean, they look quick so normally, team mate related, they should be quick also in race pace if everything calms down a little bit. So for me, I think it will be more of a battle with the guys behind me.\u201d<\/p>\n On the other side of the Red Bull<\/a> garage, Isack Hadjar<\/a> wound up in P8 and could not hide his frustration at the outcome of his session.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m eighth, the final guy of the top four [team\u2019s] cars, so it\u2019s a bit disappointing,\u201d the Frenchman explained. \u201cI\u2019m missing out on third because I was just not quick enough on that final lap.<\/p>\n \u201cMax was able to do it, so I really want to look at what went wrong in the lap. I know I didn\u2019t have the best start of it, like launching it, so I know that cost me a bit of time but, yeah.\u201d<\/p>\n When it was put to him that the margins were very fine \u2013 with a little over a tenth covering the cars from third to eighth, meaning that he was not dramatically off his team mate \u2013 Hadjar conceded: \u201cThat\u2019s why it\u2019s a bit more frustrating, because I know if I tidy up one or two things, then we can get there, but I\u2019m happy about my driving today.<\/p>\n \u201cI think I\u2019ve been on it since Lap 1, so that\u2019s good and hopefully tomorrow we find a bit more time.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Max Verstappen believes that his P3 result in Sprint Qualifying at the British Grand Prix \u201ccould easily have…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":777905,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[572],"tags":[64,63,806,805,803,804,85],"class_list":["post-777904","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-motosport","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-motor","tag-motor-sports","tag-motosport","tag-motosports","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/777904","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=777904"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/777904\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/777905"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=777904"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=777904"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=777904"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}