Max Verstappen secured a front-row start in Sprint Qualifying for the Formula 1 Belgian Grand Prix, but admitted Red Bull’s straight-line speed won’t close the gap to McLaren.
Despite a solid performance, the reigning World Champion acknowledged the challenge of overcoming its rivals this weekend.
Verstappen eased his way through SQ1 and SQ2 whilst looking quicker than at least one of the McLarens in each session.
The Dutchman was less than a quarter of a second off Oscar Piastri and Lando Norris as he went second fastest across the first two sessions.
Norris went first in SQ3 before the Red Bull driver displaced him at the top, once again managing to outqualify at least one of the McLarens.
But Piastri found immense lap time as the last of the pole contenders to set his lap time, going a staggering four-tenths quicker than Verstappen.
Still, the 27-year-old was happy to split the papaya duo as he reflected on his P2 finish with the media after the session.
“I think so – I mean, being P2 between them, I think is already a good result for us,” Verstappen explained when asked if he’d maximised the result today.
“I do think we maximised that. I enjoyed it out there. Yeah, the lap itself was fine, it was good.
“Of course, the gap is very big, but it’s been big already from FP1, so it’s not a big surprise.
“We just have to focus on ourselves and work on the balance of the car and try to go faster.”
Verstappen was then asked if removing downforce gave Red Bull a straight-line speed advantage that could help him make an early move in the Sprint race — he wasn’t convinced.
“Yeah, but when you’re almost five tenths off, I don’t think going faster or slower on the straight is going to matter a lot,” he said.
“We just have to do our own race and see what we can do.”
Verstappen assesses latest Red Bull upgrades
On the latest upgrades to the car, Verstappen admitted it’s always tricky to judge their full impact during a Sprint weekend.
“It’s always difficult in a Sprint weekend to see exactly what they do, of course, but then when you look at the gap, that’s not what we want, right?
“But we keep improving, keep trying to find more performance, but other teams do the same thing. So that’s just how it goes.”
His Red Bull team-mate Yuki Tsunoda could only manage to pull himself into SQ2 before eventually getting knocked out in 12th place.
The Austrian outfit applied the same setup choice at Silverstone with the downforce sacrifice for straight-line speed, and while it helped with qualifying, it proved disastrous for the race with the wet-weather conditions.
With rain always likely at Spa-Francorchamps, the team may opt to revert to a different set-up prior to the main 44-lap race on Sunday.
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