Despite not winning the sprint race and therefore not starting from pole, Max Verstappen is satisfied with his result from Saturday. He will start the race from the front row of the grid and has increased his lead over Lewis Hamilton by two points. He also feels that the race conditions will be more in Red Bull's favour.
In the cool conditions on Saturday, the soft tyres had the clear advantage. This made it harder for the drivers on the medium tyres to get away at the start. "My start was already not so great on those tyres," Verstappen began in the press conference after the sprint qualifying session. "In the first lap I fell back to third, but after that the pace was good."
Verstappen hopes for better conditions in race
This allowed him to re-overtake Carlos Sainz, but Valtteri Bottas proved more of a challenge. "You can't overtake here. The tyres overheat very quickly and then you're stuck. Especially when the cars are close together in terms of pace, there's not much you can do in the sprint without a pit stop. So I just sat behind basically", the Dutchman continued.
Much higher temperatures are expected during Sunday's race, something that is expected to play into Red Bull's hands. "Today was also quite a late race, so hopefully that will be a bit better for us," the Red Bull driver concluded.