Dutchman clear of Sainz as Pérez to start sixth and Tsunoda eighth in Sunday’s race at Albert Park Circuit.
Oracle Red Bull Racing’s Max Verstappen was the class act in Saturday qualifying for the Australian Grand Prix as he finished 0.270s clear of Carlos Sainz Jr. to claim his third 2024 pole position in a row.
The Dutchman was in imperious form again during Q3 as Mexican teammate Sergio Pérez finished third, but will start Sunday’s Albert Park race in sixth after receiving a three-place grid penalty for impeding the Haas of Nico Hulkenberg.
Japanese driver Yuki Tsunoda drove well to reach the final session and will start eighth on the grid for the Visa Cash App RB F1 Team with Australian teammate Daniel Ricciardo back in 18th place.
QUOTES – Oracle Red Bull Racing
MAX VERSTAPPEN – 1st
“Even though it was a more difficult weekend, achieving pole position today was great. I didn’t really expect to make it on pole, but we kept on making steady improvements throughout qualifying and I felt able to push a little bit better. Over the weekend, we have been struggling with the graining and have had a lot of things to figure out, but we just needed to keep on fine tuning the car with the Team. The balance of the car got better throughout; as we went through the session it felt easier to manage and I’m very happy with the laps we did in Q3 and surprised myself. We obviously had all the information from Q1 and Q2 and I think we achieved two very good laps. It is a bit of an unknown tomorrow as it is always easy to make a mistake here and it is harder to manage the tyres. Although the weekend has been a bit tough for us and I don’t think tomorrow will be an easy race, to still be on pole with the difficulties that we had is something we can be very proud of.”
SERGIO PEREZ – 6th
“It was quite tricky out there; I think that soft tyre was making things very difficult for us and getting up to speed on that set is quite hard but in the end it really worked well and we were able to extract the maximum from the tyre. I didn’t get the maximum from my final lap and lost a tenth at turn one, I think P2 was achievable, but I was still pleased with P3. Obviously it’s very frustrating to receive the three place penalty this evening but there is still a lot we can do from P6, it’s an open track and I can fight from there. I am confident, I want to get a strong start and move up the field. The degradation is a lot higher than last year here, it will be a challenge with Ferrari and it will come down to strategy and management of the tyres. Hopefully we get the result we want, that would be very nice for the Team.”
Oracle Red Bull Racing
