Max Verstappen will start Sunday’s title-deciding Abu Dhabi Grand Prix from the pole.
The Red Bull driver set a stunning lap in Q3 to hold off the challenge of McLaren drivers Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri.
Verstappen, who enters the season finale 12 points behind Norris in the title race, turned a best lap of one minute and 22.207 seconds on the Yas Marina Circuit.
That was good enough to edge Norris by .201 seconds.
“It was a simply lovely qualifying. We did well the whole weekend, have been fine tuning the car and then also made some final changes which helped the car a little bit,” Verstappen said. “This allowed me to push a bit more to the limit and extract the most out of the car. We were improving nicely in qualifying and then found a little bit more lap time with the corners. The big question mark is can we keep up that pace in the race?”
Verstappen knows he can only control what he control on Sunday.
“Tomorrow, the plan is to win the race and then we need a bit of luck to win the championship, it’s as simple as that,” the four-time world champion said. “We will go all out and have nothing to lose, whether we need to attack or defend. The most important battle needs to happen tomorrow and we need to outscore them by 12 points; we knew that if we wanted to be in the fight we had to be first.
“I have the least to lose and I am very relaxed. It is exciting to be on Pole, but we just need a bit of luck for the rest of it and some Abu Dhabi magic.”
Norris said he’ll need to be faster on Sunday.
“It’s tough. It’s tough. Max did a good job, so congrats to him. We did everything we could. I think my lap was pretty good, I was pretty happy,” he said. “Of course I’m disappointed not to be on pole for the final weekend, but we just weren’t fast enough today, so we’ll have to try and do it tomorrow.”
Piastri qualified third, with George Russell fourth in a Mercedes and Ferrari driver Charles Leclerc taking fifth.
