Max Verstappen was powerless in preventing a Ferrari 1-2 in qualifying for the Las Vegas Grand Prix and continued his stance of being uninspired by the street circuit.
The Dutchman qualified third on Saturday, 0.378s slower than polesitter Charles Leclerc. A 10-place grid penalty for the sister Ferrari of Carlos Sainz means that Verstappen will be promoted to the front row for Saturday night’s Grand Prix.
Over the course of the weekend, Red Bull had no answer for the one-lap pace of the Maranello-based Scuderia, while a strategy error with Sergio Perez saw the Mexican become a shock elimination in Q2 along with Mercedes’ Lewis Hamilton. Perez will start 11th as the last beneficiary of Sainz’s grid drop.
Despite securing a front-row start, Verstappen has been a vocal critic of Formula 1’s return to Las Vegas, having previously branded the event “99% show, 1% sporting event”.
The layout of the 6.2km circuit hasn’t exactly enthused the Dutchman either, comparing it to the “National League” – the lowest tier on England’s footballing pyramid.
Asked to draw a comparison between Vegas and Monaco, he quipped: “I think Monaco is like [the] Champions League and this is like National League.”
“Naturally I’m not a big fan of street circuits. I prefer the high-speed tracks that really get the best from an F1 car,” Verstappen said, issuing his verdict on F1’s latest street circuit.
“But when you are out there and pushing on the limit everything feels quite exciting, so I think it’s very low grip, I feel it’s a bit like Baku.
“It has nothing to do with our car being bad or whatever, it’s more that I don’t really enjoy that you can’t push to a certain limit, like you are always limited by the sliding.
“That’s my personal feeling, right, everyone has their own preferences. I do think it looks amazing what they have built in such a short time space, it looks pretty incredible. Also the track itself, after the little issues, especially for Carlos it was a big one, I think they have solved it quite well and we got over it, so I guess that’s positive.”
As temperatures cooled, Verstappen took to the circuit later than the rest for his final Q3 attempt but aborted his attempt after being unable to find improvements.
“The whole weekend already I think we were not strong enough over one lap. So no real surprise there,” rued Verstappen, who has so far claimed pole on 11 occasions in 2023.
“I tried to do the best I can, I dropped the rear wing also so it probably took more time to get into a nicer rhythm, but yeah we were just too slow.
“That lap in Q3, I was quite happy with it, I improved quite a bit from Q2 and honestly there was not much more in it. There wasn’t any corner where I lost time in my Q2 lap, I improved in every corner a little bit and felt OK, not good enough but it felt OK.”
Red Bull head into the inaugural race along the Las Vegas Strip buoyed by strong long-run performance during qualifying.
But with no previous experience to go by, how the 50-lap affair will unfold remains an unknown.
“Tomorrow is different, it’s not about the one-lap performance, it’s about keeping your tyres alive and stopping the graining on the tyres, so hopefully we might have an advantage there or at least a chance to fight them [Ferrari],” he added.
“In the race it will depend a lot on who can keep their tyres alive or who will grain the tyres more, so we will have to wait and see tomorrow. That’s the beautiful thing, there is no Sprint race to find out.”
