How much time and how many positions Verstappen gained from Hadjar's tow

It looked a bit too close for comfort during Max Verstappen’s final run. After the first tow from his Red Bull colleague in Q3 was just a touch too far ahead of him, the two Red Bull drivers narrowly avoided touching in Verstappen’s second run. Afterwards, however, Verstappen said the tow was perfect.

"He definitely helped me. Otherwise I wouldn’t be standing here right now. Without that slipstream I probably would’ve been sixth or something," Verstappen said right after qualifying. "He did a really great job today by giving me a slipstream in the final sector. That’s why we’re here now. Tomorrow I’ll of course have to keep a close eye on my mirrors for the cars around me, but for today I think we’ve achieved a very nice result."

Verstappen is right that the field was close. Even with the tow, the gap between Verstappen and Antonelli was more than three tenths, and four rivals behind Verstappen were within two tenths of him. So it’s understandable that Verstappen thought he would drop back to P6 anyway. Still, the reality is even harsher for Verstappen.

If you look at the telemetry from Verstappen’s second run in Q3 and compare it to his fastest run in Q2, the effect of the tow is clearly noticeable. The speed trace already shows that in the final part of the circuit, at the biggest difference, Verstappen was going 15 km/h faster than without a tow. That difference isn’t that large the whole time, but the speed line in Q3 sits well above the one in Q2, while the rest of the lap is almost identical.

It’s all the more evident in the delta relative to his Q2 lap. Exiting Turn 15, Verstappen is 0.495s quicker than his Q2 lap. By the braking zone for the Bus Stop chicane, that difference has grown to a whopping 0.921s. So Verstappen gained 0.426s from the tow—nearly half a second.

If you add that time to Verstappen’s final lap time, you get a 1:45.104. That would have dropped Verstappen behind Racing Bulls driver Arvid Lindblad. So not P6, but P8 might have been the result without a tow.

That the tow was also better than the first run in Q3 becomes clear when you compare those two laps. It turns out the final run in Q3 was indeed quicker in that whole section. Thanks to the higher speed, Verstappen gained more than a tenth compared to his first Q3 run.

A fine piece of teamwork from Red Bull Racing, but the honest truth is that Red Bull clearly doesn’t have the pace for the position Verstappen achieved. Sunday will show how good the RB22’s race pace is. On Saturday, the Red Bull didn’t look much better than Lindblad’s updated Racing Bull.