Max Verstappen has finished the sprint qualifying of the Qatar Grand Prix in sixth. The Dutchman, just like in training, suffered from serious bounce on his RB21 car. At the start of the last run of the session, the four-time world champion went wide, leaving him with a damaged underside and just one chance at putting down a lap time. Ultimately, he got no higher than sixth, behind teammate Yuki Tsunoda. Oscar Piastri was the fastest man of the sprint qualifying, followed by George Russell. Lando Norris took third place, with Fernando Alonso just behind.

How was the session for Max? “Not good. From the first lap just really bad bouncing and very aggressive understeer that would shift into oversteer in high speed. So, yeah, just not what you want. You want to go faster.” Despite the car’s terrible handling, Max clarified that the team tried to make some adjustments to the car: “We tried to of course change a few things on the wheel, but it never really worked, which made it quite tricky.”

After the first free practice a lot of changes were made to the car, but this didn’t translate into better performance during qualifying. “We changed a few things, but it clearly wasn’t working in qualifying. This is something we need to understand.” Looking ahead to the sprint race, Max is not optimisitc about the balance on the car: “With this balance tomorrow in the sprint at least, it will not be a lot of fun. It will more be about trying to survive, I guess, and make some changes going into qualifying (for the race)”.