Max Verstappen believes that he will have a fight on his hands for
the Sao Paulo Grand Prix victory after a “close” qualifying
session. Verstappen took his 11th pole position of the season on
Friday, besting Charles Leclerc to the top spot on the front row.
The Dutchman’s lap came just in time before heavy rain pelted the
circuit in the second half of Q3, resulting in Race Control
throwing a red flag. Verstappen’s effort was three-tenths of a
second ahead of Leclerc, who couldn’t repeat his pole position
speed from Mexico last weekend. With Red Bull being defeated just
once this year so far, Verstappen is expecting that another close
event will be on the cards in Sao Paulo. “It seems that it’s all
very close so you can see that already in qualifying,” he said. “I
expect the same also in the race around here there’s always quite a
lot of deg from the tyres. “So it’s all about that management and
last year we didn’t get that right but I think we will be better
this year.” Insane weather As for the heavy rain that hit the
circuit late on, Verstappen added: “We didn’t know if it would hit
but then it did hit. “This is insane weather. Charles and I were
just discussing our laps, they felt terrible. “I think the wind
started to change and started to be very strong and we lost a lot
of lap time because of it. But it was quite hectic in the last
lap.”
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