Max Verstappen thought he had over-committed on several occasions during his pole-winning lap at Suzuka.
The Red Bull driver produced a superb lap at the end of the session to beat Lando Norris to pole position by one hundredth of a second.
He said he felt “a lot of happiness when I crossed the line” to score his first pole position since June last year.
He had been sixth after Q1, third in Q2 and second following the first runs in Q3. “The whole qualifying, we just kept on trying to improve the situation a bit,” he explained.
“On the final lap, honestly, it was very good. I had a lot of fun out there, being fully committed everywhere.
“In some places I was not sure if I was actually going to keep it or not. But it was really nice. And also great for the team as well.”
Verstappen said there were six points on the circuit where he thought he was going to go off. “I think exit of [turn] one, into two, six, seven, eight and then Spoon – those places I was like, well, I hope it’s going to stick. But it did.”
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After taking provisional pole position from Norris, Verstappen had to wait for Oscar Piastri in the other McLaren to finish his lap to know he had secured pole.
“When I crossed the line, I could see my name pop up, but I knew Oscar was still behind me. But I was already just very happy with what I did there because I didn’t even expect to be close to that. So that was a nice moment.”
Red Bull tested a range of set-up approaches on Verstappen’s car during practice and at one point he said on his radio it felt as if it was flexing. However it handled much better by qualifying, said Verstappen.
“It was a bit better, I think that issue was a lot better today,” he said. “At the same time, the through-corner balance is still what we need to work on.
“On low fuel over one lap, some bits you can mask a little bit. But it’s still not like I go into the lap fully confident and comfortable.
“So the last lap I was like, well, I’m just going to not try and feel uncomfortable, just send it in and see what we get. It’s very rare that a lap like that then can stick, but this time it worked well.
“We know that we have some issues that we want to solve, but it’s clearly not easy to solve them at the moment.”
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2025 Japanese Grand Prix
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