Honda very happy with Verstappen: 'Red Bull Racing is very competitive'.

The Red Bull Racing team was already looking strong in the winter test and free practice sessions. This turned out to be the true performance in qualifying. At Honda they are very satisfied with the result on Saturday.

Fans have been wanting to see more competition in Formula 1 for years and that finally seems to have arrived. In the first qualifying session of the year, Max Verstappen took pole position with a lap that was 0.388 seconds faster than Lewis Hamilton.

At Honda, they are therefore very pleased with the Dutchman's result. "The first qualifying session of the season has produced a very positive result for us, with Max Verstappen taking pole position on behalf of Red Bull Racing and Pierre Gasly on P5 for AlphaTauri," said Toyoharu Tanabe via a statement on Twitter.

Preparing well for the race

"Sergio Perez and Yuki Tsunoda, like their teammates, tried to reach Q3 on the medium tyre so that they could start the race with that. In the end, they had to settle for 11th and 13th places," continued the Honda F1 technical director.

"Nevertheless Yuki showed a strong pace, with second fastest lap in Q2 behind Max and Sergio has also shown a lot of speed. So we expect a good performance from them on Sunday. Both teams are very competitive all weekend, so we will spend the next few hours making sure we are as prepared as possible to turn a strong qualifying session into a good race for all four drivers", Tanabe concludes.