Verstappen becoming pole champion at the Qatar GP is “a miracle” for Red Bull

Max Verstappen described his pole position at the Qatar Grand Prix as “a miracle” after managing to recover from a poor sprint race.

Red Bull were uncompetitive in the sprint as Verstappen finished eighth and was unable to catch Nico Hulkenberg over the shorter race distance, leading him to say that he needed a miracle to be competitive in qualifying. However, the four-time world champion was at the front of the field throughout Saturday night’s session and took pole on his final lap by 0.055 seconds over George Russell.

“I mean it couldn’t have been worse (in the sprint), so we just looked at it,” Verstappen said. “It’s not all clear, but we think we have to try this direction. We put it on the car and it worked.

“There are a lot of people in the factory who have been analyzing a lot of things all weekend. But at the end of the day, you have to make the decisions whether you want to do it or not. (The) simulator also runs in the background and yes, a miracle happened!

“I thought that maybe we could improve the car a little bit, but that’s definitely not the case.

“At the entrance, in the middle of the corner, it just felt a little more tense, as if everything that was bad before had improved significantly. I noticed right from the first lap that everything felt a little more consistent. That’s exactly what we needed to be a little more competitive.”

Despite the progress, Verstappen said racing performance in the sprint was so poor that he was still not sure how competitive Red Bull would be on Sunday.

“It’s still a bit of a question mark,” he said. “I felt like yesterday we weren’t too far off in qualifying and then I felt like we were pretty far off in the sprint. It’s great to be on pole, but I’m not sure yet if it’s enough to really be the fastest, but we’ll find out tomorrow.”