Max Verstappen felt a top ten qualifying performance was a good achievement for the Scuderia Toro Rosso team around a track they were not expecting to be strong.
The Dutch teenager will start from the tenth position on the grid in Bahrain on Sunday, just ahead of Spanish team-mate Carlos Sainz Jr, and feels they should have a stronger race day after a lot of focus was made on long run practice due to the tyre choices they made ahead of the Grand Prix.
“It was quite a good qualifying at a track that isn’t the strongest for us, so to be that close to Q3 is quite a good achievement,” said Verstappen. “Of course you always want to end up further up, but we have to be realistic and try and make it a good race tomorrow.
“The good news is that we can choose on what tyres to start on tomorrow, so all in all it’s not a bad result.
“During the Free Practice sessions over the weekend we’ve also been focusing a bit more on the race because we didn’t have that many Super Soft tyres compared to other people, so I’m looking forward to tomorrow – it will be a tough but very interesting race!”
