Max Verstappen and Sergio Pérez will begin Sunday’s Australian Grand Prix behind the Ferrari of Charles Leclerc after the Frenchman claimed pole position in Melbourne on Sunday.
Dutchman Verstappen and Mexican Pérez came into the weekend on the back of a strong Saudi Arabian Grand Prix performance and they looked quick again around the iconic Albert Park Circuit to finish in second and third respectively.
Even though they didn’t make it through to Q3, Scuderia AlphaTauri duo Pierre Gasly and Yuki Tsunoda will start in promising spots at 11th and 13th as they both look to bank points finishes.
Oracle Red Bull Racing
MAX VERSTAPPEN – 2nd
“The weekend so far has been a bit of a struggle, there is a gap between Charles and I, but second of course is not bad and I think there is a lot more potential in the car than we are showing at the moment. I didn’t really feel 100% in the car today, so we tried to change a few things in the set up, but it didn’t quite make the improvements we hoped for and we’ll do the best we can tomorrow. I think we have a good race car and in race conditions everything stabilises a bit, so it is more consistent. Let’s hope we can have a good race tomorrow.”
SERGIO PEREZ – 3rd
“I think qualifying was going well, Q2 especially and then there were red flags on a couple of occasions which meant we didn’t get to experiment with the tyres, it is always hard with strategy when you get red flags. We went for three laps and carried that fuel just to find out at the end that the double push didn’t work any better than just setting one lap. It wasn’t the right thing to do and that costs us a couple of tenths, but Charles put in a tremendous lap, he put everything together and I didn’t. Hopefully tomorrow in the race we can be a lot closer, make it hard for them, have a strong race and enjoy it. I like this car, we are all learning every time we drive these new cars and tomorrow in the race I want to make a big step.”
CHRISTIAN HORNER – Team Principal and CEO
“That was a great performance by both our drivers. At certain points they both looked like they may be able to steal pole, but Charles put in a great lap and it was just out of reach for us, but we’ll come back and try to beat them tomorrow. Max’s lock up cost him about three-tenths and Checo had a small d-rate on his first lap and carried an extra tenth of fuel as well, because he wanted to do three laps, but we are still on the front row and P3, so we’ll take that. I still think under higher fuel we will be in better shape, and with these DRS zones it could be a really interesting race.”
Scuderia AlphaTauri
PIERRE GASLY – 11th
“It’s always disappointing to miss out on Q3, but I think this weekend has been tough for us. We saw that McLaren and Alpine have made a step forward, we just didn’t have the pace to do much better. We know what we need to work on and we’ve planned some upgrades in the coming races, but to miss Q3 by a tenth of a second is always painful. We’ve managed to improve on some areas, but some issues just remained throughout the weekend, so it’s a bigger picture we need to look at. I think we did what we could, I don’t think Q3 was on the cards today. It’s going to be a long race, there could be some mistakes made by others, so I need to keep focussed and make sure to see the chequered flag.”
YUKI TSUNODA – 13th
“It was hard but there was potential to be in the top 10. Between Q1 and Q2 I lost performance from the car and it just felt different, the rear was gone and I struggled to adapt to it. I went off track in one of my runs and impeded Pierre, which I apologise for. We have to see what happened, hopefully we can put everything together and score points in the race.”
JODY EGGINTON – Technical Director
“After a reasonable Friday, where both cars were not too far away from the pace, we made some changes overnight and had a decent FP3 with both drivers being pretty competitive. There was some fine-tuning made ahead of Qualifying, and although the Qualifying sessions went OK, we came up slightly short and couldn’t make it to Q3. The margins are small, but we just were not able to sneak in, which was disappointing. We will go away and focus on the developments coming through and re-target getting the car back into Q3 from race four onwards. Now our attention turns to the race and looking at what strategy options we have available tomorrow. Overtaking isn’t easy here, but we’ll see what we can do to score points like in previous races. I think we can finish in the top 10, it’s just a case of moving the cars forward as early as possible in the race and see if we can consolidate from there.”