DRIVERS
1 – Max VERSTAPPEN (Red Bull Racing), 2 – Lando NORRIS (McLaren), 3 – Oscar PIASTRI (McLaren)
PARC FERMÉ INTERVIEWS
(Conducted by Nico Rosberg)
Q: Oscar, that’s P3 in the end. I’m sure not exactly what you were hoping for. What went wrong there?
Oscar PIASTRI: No, nothing major. Turn 1 was a little bit average, but the rest of the lap felt pretty tidy. So, you know, I feel like I executed a pretty good session, built up to it a little bit at the start and found my feet. But I think it’s just been incredibly tight this weekend. You know, Max and Red Bull looked quick this weekend. I mean, to be honest, a lot of teams looked quick. It’s not been quite as comfortable for us. So, yeah, the result’s not a big surprise, but obviously would have loved to be a little bit further up.
Q: Is there a change now for you that you have such a huge points lead in the championship? It is quite big. Like, do you start to think about that in such qualifying where you’re like, ‘Okay, you know what, third place, damage limitation, Lando’s only second’. Do those thoughts start to come to you now?
OP: No. I mean, when you’re on the lap, you’re going for it, and you’re going for pole. You don’t know what anyone else is going to be able to pull off. So, in the moment, yes, you’re going flat out. I think, obviously afterwards, it creeps in a little bit, but, you know, there’s still a long way to go. And I’ll try and make up some spots tomorrow because I’d like a few more wins if I can.
Q: Well, it’s nice to see that there’s a little bit of championship thoughts starting to creep in from time to time. Tomorrow’s race: your car is fast, but Lando seemed to be quite a lot quicker in race practice on Friday. Are you going to be able to find that speed as well tomorrow?
OP: I mean, I don’t think it looked too bad from where I was. I think it’s been just a little bit trickier for us in general. Obviously, I missed FP1 as well, so that was kind of my first long run and, you know, the race is always very different. So I’m pretty confident with tomorrow.
Q: Lando, I think that looked like a pretty great lap at the end there. Are you shocked that Max could beat you to it?
Lando NORRIS: No, no. Max has been quick all weekend, and it’s never a surprise with Max. So, no. I mean, it was quite a session for me – just up and down and too many mistakes here and there. But to put it all together on the last lap, I was pretty happy. So I’m happy with P2.
Q: And is it still, like, a good feeling that you’re in front of your championship rival? He’s P3. Is that then still kind of, like, damage limitation and still feels okay?
LN: I mean, I always kind of give my result depending on how I drove today. So I feel like I didn’t do the best of jobs, but to end up P2 I was happy with. So, let’s say, good things and bad things. P2 is still not a bad position to be off the line. And, I mean, I want to be ahead of everyone. That includes my championship contenders and Oscar. So, yeah. Good position for tomorrow and excited for the race.
Q: So on Friday, you had super awesome race pace. Does that give you hope for tomorrow? You think you’re going to be able to carry that over?
LN: I mean, Sunday is normally our strength. But, yeah, to get past Max, I’m sure it’s going to be a big challenge. But we’ll wait and see. Their pace was also very strong. If you see the end of the stint, they’re doing the same lap times as us. So I don’t expect any magical things. And we have some Ferraris behind who I’m sure are going to want to come through as quickly as possible. It’s a long race. Many things can happen, and we’ll see what we can do.
Q: Max, what an incredible Q3 in the end there. Was that the usual Max Verstappen magic?
Max VERSTAPPEN: I try. But I think around here, with the low downforce, it’s always very difficult to nail the lap. On the braking it’s easy to make mistakes also. But Q3 felt good. Happy with the laps. And of course, to be on pole here for us is fantastic. The car has been working a lot better the whole weekend. And, yeah, to be able to fight for pole, I’m very happy with that.
Q: Did you actually think it was possible going into qualifying?
MV: It was tight. I mean, we were still lacking a tiny amount. We made some final changes, which I think allowed me to push a bit more. And that’s exactly what you need in qualifying. So, yeah, for us, it’s a great moment.
Q: And then take us into the race tomorrow. You think you got enough there to also keep the McLarens behind?
MV: Yeah. Let’s see. I mean, historically this season, the race has always been a little bit more complicated for us, but we’re going to give it everything we have. I think that’s the only thing that we can do. And then we’ll see what happens tomorrow.
PRESS CONFERENCE
Q: You said it yourself, Max. That’s unbelievable. Just how special was that pole lap at the end of Q3?
MV: It was good. 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, yeah, this year much better and very happy to be first.
Q: You say pretty decent, Max, but was that your best quali lap around Monza ever?
MV: I don’t know. I mean, it was good. I don’t even remember all my quali laps here. Is that a bad thing?
Q: You said yesterday that the car is a massive step forward over where it was here last year. Were you expecting it to be this good today?
MV: I think we had a good start to the weekend, so that was nice. That has been different at times. It still felt like we were lacking something, and then in FP3 it was a little bit better. Still not where I wanted it to be, so then some final tweaks, and that then brought it a bit closer to what I liked. I don’t think the car is ever going to be perfect around here just because of the low downforce feeling anyway. But at least it allowed me to attack corners, have the rotation that I needed at times, and that’s what you want.
Q: Even after Q2, did you think an 18.7 would be possible?
MV: It’s difficult to say because I didn’t really feel like the improvements were massive between Q1 and Q2. Then you commit a bit more in Q3, but it has a lot of factors that come into play as well with if you have a bit of tow or not. Sometimes you just get lucky as well. This is difficult to say, but at least it was good enough.
Q: You nailed the one lap. What about the race? Do you think you’ve got the pace to keep these orange cars at bay?
MV: Difficult to say. I think this season so far, the race pace has not always been great. So I hope that I can do something tomorrow, but I think anyway it’s been a great day for us. We’ve been competitive today. We’ll try to do the best we can tomorrow, but of course to stay here will be tough, but we’ll see what we can do.
Q: Very well done. Thank you for that, Max. Lando, let’s come to you now. You had pole for a moment right at the end of Q3. How good was that lap? Did you think you’d done enough?
LN: I’ll say no just because it was a pretty bad qualifying from my behalf. I think it was the best lap I did in quali by like six tenths or something. So impressive that I managed to improve so much – or probably impressive that I did such a bad job prior to that. But I think Max has been pretty good all weekend. I think also us as a team since FP1 already, we found that we were not quite in as good of a rhythm and had the pace advantage that we’ve had the past few weekends. So of course we wanted P1, but I don’t think we’d be disappointed to take a P2 either.
Q: You say it was a bad quali. What were the issues today?
LN: Just I was hitting every kerb possible that I don’t want to hit and just locking up when I shouldn’t lock up. So just not quite in the rhythm. It’s not that I’ve not been in the rhythm this weekend. I’ve felt like I’ve done some reasonable laps so far this weekend and I felt like I had some good strengths here and there, but just couldn’t click back into it come quali, until the final lap. But that’s also the only lap that I need to do it, so I’m happy that I did it in the end.
Q: What about the long run pace? Even if Max beats you into turn one, do you think you’ve got the pace to at least keep him on his toes?
LN: I definitely want to expect that. Everyoneknows that our race pace is probably a bigger strength than our quali pace. We’ve proven that many times. But, like Max said, they’ve improved a lot from last year. I think coming into the weekend, we probably didn’t expect the Red Bull to be quite as good. But as soon as we did the first few runs, it was clear that they made some good steps compared to last season. So we’ll see. His race pace was good on Friday. It wasn’t too dissimilar to ours. So time will tell.