Mark Hughes: McLaren needs to learn from ruthless Verstappen execution

Another Max Verstappen super pole lap to add to those of Suzuka and Jeddah, again after Red Bull found a lot of improvement from the original set-up.

But just as with Friday and Kimi Antonelli’s sprint pole, it was made possible by a McLaren driver – in this case Sprint race winner Lando Norris – losing the top spot at the final corner.

So of the eight qualifying sessions we’ve had so far this season, Verstappen has now scored more poles than anyone else.

Every one of them was the result of a close-to-perfect lap in not quite the fastest car, punishing a single error from one of the guys in the fastest car.

Into that mix we should add the routinely significant progress Red Bull makes in transforming a difficult Friday car into a very good Saturday one. That could either be looked upon as great work by the race team or poor track simulation at base.

McLaren’s Andrea Stella was not shirking from admitting his team had a car which was capable of locking out the front row, rather than lining up second and fourth.

Oscar Piastri couldn’t repeat his session-heading lap from Q2. Norris matched it to the thousandth – but that still fell six hundredths short of the Red Bull.

“We need to execute better and be more accurate,” said Stella.

“Oscar got out of the rhythm he had in Q2. With Lando it was flowing well until Turn 17. As we’ve seen on other occasions this season we have a car which is predictable for the races but when you push it has some little surprises in it.”

It was a low-grip track, washed clean by the heavy morning rain which had thrown the sprint race into such chaos, and on a tricky, very soft C5 compound.

It was easy to make mistakes. Even Verstappen made one on his pole lap, the tyres not quite up to temperature as he arrived at Turn 1, giving him a snap of oversteer, yet he somehow maintained good momentum regardless.

“Yes, the first sector was where he was really doing the damage,” said his admiring team boss Chistian Horner.

“We’re maybe running a bit more downforce and so we were good through those fast corners but losing time on the straights. So you saw how much time the McLarens had been making through the slow Turns 11-16 and Max didn’t overdrive through there.”

It was true. He was inch-perfect through a section the McLarens had bossed all weekend and it was actually the McLaren drivers who were a little scruffy through there this time.

“He really dug deep,” added Horner. “In truth we’re a tenth or two down on the McLarens but when you get to Q3 and the margins are so tight, that’s where the pressure is.”

In this case, Norris clattered over the inside kerb of that final turn, having got more rotation than he anticipated when using his toggle switch to temporarily change the diff setting on entry.

Without that mistake, he may have clinched pole as he fell only 0.065s short, though it wasn’t quite as sure-fire a thing as Piastri’s lock-up yesterday.

At least as significant was just how much time Verstappen found by manipulating brake and throttle on entry, overcoming the car’s natural reluctance into slow corners.

“We made a few changes from this morning,” said Verstappen in reference to the sprint (when he’d been completely out-paced by the McLarens), “and just made steady improvements in each run through Q1, 2 and 3.”

It was nowhere near a pole car on Friday, but on Saturday it was close enough that he could make the difference.

“I could rotate the car a bit better," Verstappen added.

"We’re still struggling with the car’s limitations. It’s not our strongest track, with the low-speed corners, but that turned out not to be our main problem.”

Thanks to a fresh set of softs masking the shortfall and a bit of magic behind the wheel. The new floor, he said, was not a negative, but warned, “we’re not there yet, we need a bit more to be really in the fight”.

More rain is forecast for the grand prix, which might sound like the perfect scenario for Verstappen. But he’s not so sure about that.

In the wet Sprint race he’d overheated his rear intermediate tyres after four laps.

“You saw there how I had no chance in the wet simply because the McLarens were so much better on their tyres.”

Star of sprint qualifying, Kimi Antonelli, remained Mercedes’ cutting edge, his third-fastest time splitting the McLarens and 0.114s faster than the fifth-fastest driver, his team-mate George Russell.

The Mercedes’ were fastest on the straights and Antonelli was ahead of everyone on the lap at the end of the straight before Turn 17. But the lower wing meant it couldn’t be braked as hard as the Red Bull or McLaren into that turn.

He was more at ease however with the car moving around on the soft tyre on the low-grip track than Russell.

“Qualifying is all about confidence,” said Russell, “and I’ve been really confident in the car in all the previous races this year. But I just haven’t got it here. I feel a bit out of it.”

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“These are the best laps I can do,” said Charles Leclerc over the radio after just squeezing his Ferrari into Q3, in P8, a position he repeated in Q3 itself, 0.5s off pole.

“I cannot go any faster.”

Lewis Hamilton was much closer to Leclerc this time – only 0.058s behind – but because the car was at its least competitive, that put him on the wrong side of the Q2/3 threshold, especially after saving a new set of softs, something Leclerc didn't do.

“I think there was something off with my car,” said Leclerc of the machine which had been extensively rebuilt since his aquaplaning crash on his lap to the Sprint grid.

“Because it was completely out of the window. We had to change it a lot from Q1 just to make Q3 and it never felt good. My Q3 lap was a good one but there are two Williams’ ahead of us.

"We are paying a price in the low-speed corners and so the track probably isn’t helping us.”