Max Verstappen says Red Bull is not currently in a position to battle Mercedes, due to the reigning champions’ pace, but that Ferrari is within reach.
Verstappen qualified fourth for Formula 1’s Spanish Grand Prix, splitting the Ferrari drivers – with Charles Leclerc hindered by damage in the wake of running heavily over the Turn 9 exit kerb in Q2.
Verstappen’s Q3 effort left him within a tenth of Sebastian Vettel, who in turn was over eight-tenths of a second behind pole-sitter Valtteri Bottas.
“If you compare to Mercedes, of course, we are lacking quite a bit,” said Verstappen.
“So in that perspective I think we’re not where we want to be. Yeah, we can be very honest about that. I’m not here to qualify fourth.
“Of course I’m happy to qualify between the Ferrari cars but I think as a team we want to challenge the number 1, that is Mercedes.
“I think we have a realistic chance of fighting with Ferrari. We are quite close. Mercedes is a different story.”
Team-mate Pierre Gasly qualified in sixth position, equalling his best result of the year.
“Mercedes clearly seem much faster than anyone else,” said Gasly.
“Ferrari we expected them to make a bigger step in qualifying and finally we ended up really close to them.
“It will be interesting for the race tomorrow as we know the start is really important here so we will try to focus on that and get some good points here.”
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