Max Verstappen races to first place in sprint qualifying at the Miami Grand Prix. Everything as always, at least in terms of placement. Because unlike usual, the Formula 1 dominator doesn’t get a good lap – and is almost laughing his head off afterwards.
Max Verstappen can also allow himself (from his point of view) mediocre laps in the 2024 Formula 1 season in order to be at the front. In the sprint qualifying in Miami, the Dutchman had a lot of trouble in his only attempt in SQ3 and still distanced Ferrari driver Charles Leclerc by just over a tenth of a second.
“LOL,” Verstappen replied to his race engineer on Red Bull radio when he announced the sprint pole to him. If the abbreviation from the chat world means nothing to you. It stands for “Laughing out loud” – for resounding, but sometimes astonished laughter.
“To be honest, it felt really terrible,” Verstappen later commented on his performance. “After training I was actually confident that we would be able to fight for pole, but it didn’t look like it in qualifying. But somehow we still ended up in first place.”
Formula 1 is currently a sport in which Max Verstappen can drive as he wants (or doesn’t want) – and still be at the front.
Formula 1: Verstappen puzzles about soft tires
In the first two laps of qualifying it looked as if McLaren driver Lando Norris could have a say in the pole with fresh upgrades. But when it came down to it, the Brit only ended up in ninth place.
“Maybe it was just incredibly difficult to get the tires to work in the last section, because it didn’t feel great in SQ2,” Verstappen tried to answer his self-posed question “what happened to the others?” to answer.
He “didn’t really improve” on the soft in SQ3, but we’re still somehow first. He would be happy to take first place on the grid for Saturday’s quickie in Florida. “But it wasn’t really fun.”
It was a problem “to get these soft tires into the right window,” Red Bull consultant Helmut Marko confirmed his protégé’s suspicions to the “ORF”. “But he did it best of all.”
Marko and Red Bull found McLaren’s weakness in SQ3 incomprehensible. The team from Woking set the tone in the first sections with the medium tires. Norris’ time in SQ2 was even faster than Verstappen’s later best time for the sprint pole.