Max Verstappen has hailed his British Grand Prix qualifying result "the best of his career" after beating team-mate Daniel Ricciardo for the first time since joining Red Bull earlier this season.
Verstappen qualified third behind the two Mercedes cars, a tenth ahead of team-mate Ricciardo and was thankful to finally get the opportunity to show his potential on Saturday.
“I think the whole weekend we have been pretty strong and that resulted in a really good qualifying, the best of my F1 career to date and definitely the best we could do today," he said.
"Sometimes I have been very unlucky in qualifying but today has gone well and I was able to show my potential. From now on I will just focus on that and try to keep it up."
The Dutch teenager believes beating Mercedes on Sunday might require some rain, but expects to hold off any chasing rivals behind and is therefore eyeing another podium finish.
"Silverstone is a great track and I always enjoy driving here. Going through Maggots and Becketts the car is fantastic, no oversteer, no understeer; it feels so nice going through those corners. The car has been performing brilliantly all weekend so I’m looking forward to the race.
"Hopefully we can maintain this position, it will be important to try and keep up and also keep fighting behind. If it rains we could be a lot closer to Mercedes but if not then we’ll try to just keep position and we will be very happy with that."
Ricciardo confident
Ricciardo heads into the race happy to have locked out the second-row, although disappointed to be fourth, but believes, like Verstappen, that Red Bull are in a good position to challenge Mercedes.
"As a team result it was definitely important to get the second row lock-out," he said. "That was our target and we got that so I think we look good for tomorrow.
"It’s cool to have both of us in front of the Ferraris. I knew this would be a pretty big fight with them here and we managed to at least fight the qualifying battle so we’ll try and keep them behind us in the race tomorrow.
"Obviously, I would have preferred third rather than being fourth but that’s how it is today and tomorrow we’ll aim to go better and as good as we can," he added.
"It’s going to be cooler tomorrow and you never know what’s going to happen, but I think we’re pretty confident where we sit.
"The two Mercedes will probably fight at the front and behind them it should be a good battle. For sure Ferrari will give us a bit of a run for our money, so there is definitely that third spot up for grabs. You’ll definitely see a race tomorrow."
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