Max Verstappen says trying to right the wrong of his 2018 loss would be the wrong approach for the Brazilian Grand Prix.
The Dutchman led all three parts of qualifying in Sao Paulo on Saturday as he claimed a second career pole by a tenth from Sebastian Vettel.
Q3 though would be a little trickier as an error on his first run reduced his gap to just 0.008s but he regrouped to match his best time from Q2 at the second attempt to wrap it up.
“Yea, it was good enough,” Max said of his pole lap in the paddock.
“Throughout qualifying the track temperature was going a bit up which for me, that was more tricky in the final qualifying session (Q3), but overall, the car was really good throughout the whole qualifying.
“Some final adjustments really made the car come alive and just very happy to claim the pole position.”
The result puts Verstappen in the best place possible from which to try and claim the victory which he lost 12 months ago in Brazil after colliding with Esteban Ocon while leading.
When asked if redemption was on his mind though, the 22-year-old played it down.
“Yea, well you should never approach it like that,” he stated. “I mean it’s done, it’s happened and of course it’s not nice that it happened but we just try to have a good race again.
“Pace should be [good], but we’ll find out tomorrow.”
Red Bull teammate Alex Albon will line up fifth following the penalty for Charles Leclerc but was almost half a second slower than Verstappen in qualifying.
The British-Thai driver though didn’t want to put that down to his lack of experience at Interlagos.
“Not really, I don’t want to use that excuse, I feel like I want to be quick straight away and yea it was OK,” he commented.
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“Obviously, FP1 not having any [dry] running and then just didn’t find the rhythm in FP2 or 3 so, all in all, it wasn’t a bad comeback coming into qualifying, but I’m still chasing it a bit and I wanna be quicker!”
Albon is also hoping for a more competitive Sunday having slipped back the last time he was mixing it with Mercedes and Ferrari in Mexico.
“It has been close and I think we have every reason to be in the mix from P5, so we’ll see,” he concluded.