Max Verstappen says Red Bull’s new floor design contributed to his pole position at Silverstone despite a rocky start to practice with the upgrade.
He ran the team’s new floor design from the start of practice but grappled with understeer on the opening day of running.
“I think it just caught us out yesterday,” said Verstappen. “We had that much understeer in the car, which we didn’t expect to happen. So, then you need to work around with the tools that you have. Luckily, we went into the right direction with it.”
Verstappen claimed his fourth pole position of the season by a tenth of a second from the McLaren drivers and credited the team’s upgrade afterwards.
“I’m not sure how much it did, but for sure it brought something,” he said. “I’m happy with any kind of upgrade that we get on the car. We just keep learning, keep trying to be better, and take it race by race what we can do.”
He also opted to run a lower-downforce rear wing for the race which helped cure the understeer he had in practice.
“We looked a bit slow yesterday on the other wing,” said Verstappen. “Plus, I was just understeering to the moon. So, I had to try and reduce a bit that understeer, and it seemed to work.
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“It is light on downforce for sure. You can see that, I guess. But it seemed to hold on and that’s why we decided to stick with it. We’ll see what we get from it tomorrow in the race.”
He said he was surprised to end up on pole position after being dissatisfied with his car’s balance on his first lap in Q3.
“My first lap, I don’t know, it just felt really different to Q2,” he said. “Just more oversteer, more understeer in places, and that then made the lap not amazing.
“But I never thought that I could find – whatever it was – almost four tenths, I think. So it worked, so I’m happy with that.”
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