MIAMI — Max Verstappen was down but not out.
The four-time world champion bounced by from a pitlane miscue during the day’s Sprint Race to win the pole for Sunday’s Miami Grand Prix during qualifying at the Miami Int’l Autodrome.
The Red Bull driver clocked a best lap of one minute and 26.204 seconds to land the top qualifying spot.
“To achieve pole today was unexpected. We put the lap together and didn’t make too many mistakes so that was really positive,” Verstappen said. “The day didn’t start that well and the Sprint was not good for us. There wasn’t much we could do after the penalty, so you just have to refocus and do your best in qualifying and we went from last to first within the day. We had adjusted the car a little bit beforehand and in each qualifying session we just chipped away at it a bit more. I think we can still improve on the slow speed and I do think that we are not the quickest over a lap but we managed to put it together, which is the most important thing in qualifying.
“When you arrive to the track you go to race mode and of course, I’m very happy about achieving pole. At the end of the day it is all a Team effort; you have to look at every single detail and we are really trying our best with the car. Looking to tomorrow, in the dry we wouldn’t have that same pace but in the wet a lot of things can happen, but we need to be on it. We have some decent pace, but we need to maximize everything that we can. We will see what we can do.”
Sprint race winner Lando Norris qualified second for McLaren, while Mercedes driver Kimi Antonelli was third.
Oscar Piastri had to settle for fourth in the McLaren ahead of Mercedes’ George Russell in fifth.
