2021 Turkish GP: Post-Qualifying comments from Max and Red Bull

Red Bull and Max Verstappen are not the fastest car on the track during Turkish GP qualifying but The Dutchman will start the race from P2 on the grid.

Both Max and Sergio Perez struggled in the tricky weather conditions they just managed to qualify in P3 and P7, but both will be promoted one place higher on the starting grid tomorrow due to 10 place grid penalty to the Saturday’s fastest qualifier.

Perez needs to do better job tomorrow to maximize advantage over championship rivals. But it will be hard task to overtake old wise Fernando Alonso and faster AlphaTauri ahead of him, so the start will be key to gain some places.

For Max, he has to be careful with Bottas at the start of the race in the first corner, nothing fancy. Since his rival Lewis is starting at P11, mathematically Max will retake lead in the championship if everything goes well.

Max Verstappen (P3)

“I am of course happy with third and starting on the front row tomorrow. We improved a little bit from yesterday and the balance is a bit better but overall this weekend has been a bit more difficult.

I hope for a clean get away tomorrow but starting on the inside will be tricky, as there is very low grip in both dry and wet conditions compared to the outside, so we are expecting to lose out there slightly.

We also need to consider the gap behind us, it’s much tighter than usual. We’ll aim to make the best of it and try everything we can tomorrow to keep the Mercedes behind but it’s not going to be easy, they’ve had great pace all weekend.”

Sergio Perez (P7)

“We are showing good progress and I think we should be able to continue that into race day. With the mixed conditions in Q1 we lost a set of new softs, meaning we only had one set for Q3.

We did a banker lap on the used softs which was a decent time and then we didn’t manage to improve as much as we wanted to on the second run, which meant we didn’t get the lap time we were looking for.

I am feeling positive and I am looking forward to trying to get through the grid and score some good points for the Team. It is a pretty long race around here, overtaking is possible and the tyre degradation will be pretty high out there, so there is everything to play for.

I believe if we can get a good clean run into turn one then we will be looking good for the rest of the race and a podium could be possible. We are up for the challenge; we have good strategy and pace.”

Christian Horner, Team principal

“I think the whole engineering Team, both trackside and back at the factory in Milton Keynes, have done a great job to make the progress that we have, hopefully that puts us in better shape for tomorrow.

With Max qualifying in third, but starting the race from second, it’s going to be vital he gets a good start and tries to get ahead of Bottas early on as Lewis has looked the quickest he’s been all year so far around here, so he’s going to be coming through pretty quickly.

Checo’s times on the scrub tyre and the medium tyre were strong, it was just that last run on the new set of softs that didn’t come together. The strategy we’ve picked tomorrow for him should see him be able to make good progress.

We think we can be closer to Mercedes tomorrow than we were in qualifying, so we’ve got to get our heads down, keep plugging away, get the strategy right and try to capitalise by getting the maximum points we can for both drivers.”