Verstappen happy with new qualifying rule: 'Hopefully a bit fairer now'

On Saturday, the first qualifying session of the season will take place for the Bahrain Grand Prix. For Max Verstappen it looks good after a first place in the second and third free practice. In any case, the Dutchman is happy with the new qualifying rule.

As of this season, teams in fact have free choice of tyres for the start of the race. Normally teams had to start the race on the tyre used to qualify in Q2. This often led to different strategies, as the top teams sometimes tried to continue to Q3 on the medium tyres.

Speaking to Viaplay in the preview of qualifying, Verstappen said that he is happy with the new rule. "In the end it is a bit more relaxed to qualify. Normally you're always busy with Q2, where you try to qualify on a different tyre and that was just very annoying."

Verstappen hopes for fair chance for all teams

"It also ended up giving us more advantage than the other teams. I hope now it's just all a bit fairer for everyone to just start on almost the same tyre," Verstappen added. So from now on, we can expect everyone to just qualify on the softest tyre during all three sessions on Saturday.