Max Vertstappen was confused as to how he failed to secure pole position for the United States Grand Prix after being beaten by Drivers\u2019 Championship leader Kimi Antonelli during Qualifying in Austin.<\/p>\n
The Dutchman improved his times throughout Saturday\u2019s sessions to register an impressive 1:34.214 lap in Q3, but it wasn\u2019t enough as the Italian stormed through and finished just under two tenths quicker than the four-time World Champion.<\/p>\n
“I think just a few corners didn\u2019t come together in Q3 which is something that I don\u2019t understand because I didn\u2019t make mistakes,\u201d admitted Verstappen<\/a> afterwards.<\/p>\n \u201c[The car] was not as planted as what I\u2019d hoped for so then you have little slides and you just can\u2019t put the power down basically.<\/p>\n \u201cIt cost me in the first run unfortunately and okay, you have another run, but then the wind picked up and nobody could improve so it was very difficult.”<\/p>\n Saturday\u2019s result ended Verstappen\u2019s recent Qualifying streak after taking pole in both Malaysia and Singapore \u2013 where he converted both into race wins \u2013 but the Dutchman remains optimistic ahead of Sunday\u2019s Grand Prix.<\/p>\n \u201cThe whole weekend has been close between a lot of cars and it\u2019s just a matter of details to get it right and that\u2019s the same tomorrow in the race.<\/p>\n \u201cYou need to look after your tyres, you need to have a good, solid balance in the car and hopefully we have that tomorrow.\u201d<\/p>\n Verstappen will be boosted by his Red Bull<\/a> team mate Isack Hadjar<\/a> starting just behind him on the second row in P3, who was happy with his comeback performance after a slow start to his weekend in Texas.<\/p>\n \u201cI didn\u2019t do a lap on the softs this morning because I could not complete it \u2013 that\u2019s how hard the car was to drive and to be third is outstanding,\u201d said Hadjar.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m very happy with how we worked on the car. It\u2019s not like we waited for the track conditions to improve or put on new tyres to see, we were working hard on it and I\u2019m happy with the comeback.”<\/p>\n When asked whether Red Bull could win a third successive Grand Prix on Sunday, Hadjar made the team\u2019s target clear and believes that grid positioning could play a huge role.<\/p>\n \u201cYes – that\u2019s the target,\u201d he said. \u201cFrom third, we believe the car is good and Max is right there as well so as a team, it\u2019s going to be helpful for sure, and we\u2019ll try and have a go at it.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Max Vertstappen was confused as to how he failed to secure pole position for the United States Grand…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":475935,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[132,134,133],"class_list":["post-475934","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-austin","tag-austin","tag-austin-headlines","tag-austin-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/475934","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=475934"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/475934\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/475935"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=475934"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=475934"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=475934"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}