Max Verstappen does think he'll be looking forward rather than in his mirrors during the French Grand Prix.

The Dutchman found himself a second down on pole in fourth but mere thousandths ahead of the chasing pack led by McLaren's Lando Norris.

Much like Canada though, when the Renault challenge ultimately faded, Verstappen still anticipates his main race will be with Ferrari.

"We could have been closer to Ferrari but my final lap wasn’t very clean because the cars are this year extra sensitive to the wind and that is not nice," he explained.

"It seems that McLaren is now very close to us, normally we should be three, four tenths ahead of them but we maximised our position and I am happy to be on the second starting row.

"We need a bit of luck I think [to reach the podium] and I do not think we can fight the Mercedes, but hopefully we can with the Ferraris.

"It will be tricky, but at least we start in a good position in comparison with Canada. We give it a good go and see where we end up."

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Certainly, his position is much more palatable that teammate Pierre Gasly who starts a lowly ninth for his home race and on the soft compound tyres which teams were ditching in Q2.

“It was a difficult qualifying overall," he admitted. "We made some changes after [FP3] and qualifying was tricky as I struggled with grip.

"I’m quite disappointed with ninth because I think we clearly had more than that, but that’s where we are and we’ll have to fight tomorrow."

On his tyre predicament, Gasly admitted: "We start the race on the soft tyre so we know it’s not going to be easy, but the long run pace was okay.

"We will have to look at the strategy and see what we can do to make these tyres last as long as they can so we can fight our way back and recover some positions. I’ll be pushing flat out.”