Max Verstappen said Red Bull weren’t quick enough to qualify on the front row in Shanghai, despite taking second on the grid for the sprint race.
He fell short of beating Lewis Hamilton to pole position by just 0.018 seconds. Verstappen, who was only 16th in the single practice session after aborting his soft tyre run, said he was “very happy” with the result.
“I do think that in the first practice we were quite a bit off, so I’m very happy to be on the front row,” he told the official F1 channel.
“The lap was very good. It’s always very tough, when you go from a medium [tyre] to a soft, to nail the lap with no references.
“Of course when you look at it, it was 18 thousandths or something off pole, but I don’t think we should have even been on the front row anyway. I’m very happy to be second.”
Although Verstappen’s deficit in practice was exaggerated by circumstances, he said it was clear their RB21 isn’t quick enough to challenge McLaren yet.
“I don’t think the balance is massively off, we’re just too slow I would say,” he explained. “But this is good for us, it’s a little motivation boost I think as well for everyone that we keep nailing the laps, we keep trying to maximise everything that we’ve got, and you need to do that as well, at the same time when you’re maybe struggling a little bit more for pace.”
| Become a RaceFans supporter and
Lando Norris, who beat Verstappen to victory in the opening race last week, will start sixth. Oscar Piastri in the other McLaren will line up one place behind Verstappen in third.
The Red Bull driver is unsure he will be able to keep the McLarens behind in tomorrow’s 19-lap sprint race.
“I think they looked very fast up until that last run,” he said. “So I think it will be very hard to keep them behind.
“But hopefully it will be fun, hopefully, we are all, I wouldn’t say close, but at least that we can race a bit around, that would be nice for me.”
Miss nothing from RaceFans
Get a daily email with all our latest stories – and nothing else. No marketing, no ads. Sign up here:
| Become a RaceFans supporter and
2025 Chinese Grand Prix
Browse all 2025 Chinese Grand Prix articles
