Max Verstappen said taking pole position for the Italian Grand Prix was a “big” result for Red Bull after the difficulties they encountered at Monza last year.

He qualified seventh on the grid 12 months ago, lapping almost seven tenths of a second away from pole position, and finished sixth in the race.

“To get pole here for us is big,” said Verstappen after claiming his fifth pole position of the season yesterday. “It’s not always been a good track for us, especially last year was quite a bit of a disaster. This year is much better and I’m very happy to be first.”

Having been a tenth of a second off the pace in final practice, Verstappen enjoyed a strong qualifying session and was consistently the fastest driver on soft tyres – only George Russell beat him in Q1 using the medium rubber. Verstappen said Red Bull kept finding small improvements which increased his confidence at the wheel.

“I’m not going to say what I did on the car, but it gave me a better feeling and a bit better balance,” he said. “Most people do that – throughout the whole weekend you always fine-tune bits. It’s not like we threw the car around, it’s like tickling things.”

His first lap in Q3 was the fastest of all the drivers up to that point but on his final run he had to respond to a challenge from Lando Norris, who went quicker.

“In Q3 my first lap was already pretty decent,” said Verstappen. “There was no big mistake. My improvements were like three or four hundredths here and there.

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“That’s also Monza for you. If you don’t make any big mistakes, there’s not that much lap time left. It’s like maybe hitting an apex a bit better or a kerb. Sometimes you gain two or three hundredths on the straight – you get lucky. That happens as well. That’s basically what happened in my quali lap.”

However Verstappen is unsure how well the gains they found in qualifying will translate to the grand prix: “It’s difficult to say.

“This season so far, the race pace has not always been great. So I hope that I can do something, but I think anyway it’s been a great day for us. We’ve been competitive today. We’ll try to do the best we can, of course to stay here will be tough, but we’ll see what we can do.”

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