Honda happy with P3 of Verstappen after 'difficult afternoon'

Monza doesn't seem to be the strongest circuit for Red Bull Racing Honda. Nevertheless, Max Verstappen and Pierre Gasly were able to get the best out of the cars. Unfortunately, Sergio Perez and Yuki Tsunoda had a worse result during qualifying at Monza.

"This is the second event run to the Sprint Qualifying format, which means not having much time to assess data and decide on our settings. So it was a busy day for our two teams and the Honda engineers, with just one hour of free practice and then the two and half hours before qualifying to make the right choices," Toyoharu Tanabe said on the Honda website.

Thanks to Perez's slipstream, Verstappen was able to take third place. "Max’s third place is a good result, given that we struggled a bit in FP1. As for Checo, he was unable to get a tow in Q3 and had to settle for ninth."

Good performance by Gasly

Pierre Gasly won the race at Monza last year, today he qualified between the two Red Bulls. "Pierre, who won this race last year, performed well all day and sixth place on the grid means he should be able to have another good race this time."

Yuki Tsunoda, on the other hand, had a lesser result. "Unfortunately for Yuki, although he had made the cut to Q2, his time was disallowed for exceeding track limits. But his pace is good, so hopefully he can overtake some cars tomorrow. I don't think this will be an easy weekend for us, but we now have two races to try and do our best with both teams and secure a good result in Monza," said Tanabe.