With Max Verstappen in third place and Alexander Albon in sixth place, Red Bull had a qualification with two faces. Verstappen competed for pole position until the last seconds, while the struggling Albon had to content himself with a sixth starting position. Behind Charles Leclerc and Sergio Perez and half a second from his teammate.
Albon took a gamble by starting on the medium bands in Q3, something that initially seemed to work fairly well. In the final phase he was unable to impress on the soft tire.
“On the medium it went okay, but somehow the softs are not going well this weekend. Possibly because of the oil in the new asphalt. We had a difficult time as a team in Q1 and Q2 to get the tires up to temperature. and have tried different ways for this “, Albon explains in conversation with RacingNews365, among others.
“As soon as we put the medium tires underneath we felt competitive and so we decided to apply them in Q3. If I knew the tire just a little better, I could have had a better time.”
Albon was not that dissatisfied with his lap, but the result did not make him entirely satisfied: “My lap on the softs felt quite good, but it was difficult and I didn’t have time for an extra warm-up lap on the softs to make sure that they put something more into it window already.”
With the cooperation of Dieter Rencken.
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