Max Verstappen was happy enough with fourth place on the grid for the Hungarian Grand Prix, but felt with one more lap it could have been an ever better result for the young Dutchman.
The Red Bull Racing driver remains confident for race day at the Hungaroring however, having felt comfortable behind the wheel of his RB12, as shown by his pace in final practice in the dry on Saturday morning ahead of the wet-dry qualifying session.
“It was a bit of a shame in Q3 because everyone was backing off so I also had to back off to get a free lap,” said Verstappen. “If you are within two or three seconds of the car in front you will lose lap time, in qualifying especially you don’t want that.
“I was very unfortunate to miss the line by 0.8 seconds, but there was a yellow flag anyway so I couldn’t improve. We can be very happy with 4th after a very tricky qualifying. It’s always a bit of a gamble when conditions are like that so you can’t really show everything you’ve got. We had the speed to qualify higher, I feel, but today it wasn’t to be.
“During the race I hope we can go a few steps further and be close to Mercedes, the pace is there for sure and think it will be very exciting. If they have some issues with degradation then there will be opportunities.
“In FP3 the car was very comfortable, if we can keep the same set up in the race tomorrow I can hopefully fight hard.”
