20 October 2023 , 23:17
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Max Verstappen said a "little mistake" led to the moment which saw the United States Grand Prix stewards delete his pole-sitting lap in qualifying.
The Dutchman looked to have gone quickest overall to cement his place at the front of the grid for Sunday's race in Austin. But TV cameras showed Verstappen had appeared to exceed track limits on the penultimate corner of that lap and, soon after, the stewards concurred that it was an illegal lap.
So it was scrubbed from the board and the Red Bull driver was relegated to sixth place. Charles Leclerc took pole in his absence, while Lando Norris pulled off an excellent lap to pip Lewis Hamilton to a spot on the front row.
"I knew in Turn 19 that it was going to be a close call," said Verstappen of that lost lap. "I had a little mistake in Turn 1 so I had to really push for it in the rest of the lap. It's fine margins, honestly, I didn't even understeer, I just tried to really maximise the corner and I misjudged it by a little bit."
But he brushed it off as he joked: "It's very fine margins when you are pushing to the limit. Of course, it's a bit unfortunate but it makes the Sunday also a bit more fun."
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He must climb from sixth on the grid if he is to improve his record of 14 wins from 17 races to far in 2023. "Of course, we want to win so for sure today was not ideal, but it's still a long race and there's a lot of things we can do better and have a bit of fun out there as well," he said of his chances of doing that.
Meanwhile, Leclerc was delighted to be the man to take advantage of Verstappen's misfortune. "It feels good – it feels really good, to be honest, because the lap was really good. There were some mistakes here and there, but I really pushed like crazy so I knew that it wouldn't be the perfect lap, but I know also that I would win by taking a bit more risk elsewhere and that paid off," he beamed.
"I'm really happy with the lap and really happy to be starting on pole position here. It's not something that we expected. In the last sector we were very strong in FP1 this morning and in qualifying but, all in all, we have a strong car and the feeling in the car is good.
"That is our strength and we've seen it quite a few times this year. When we have Sprint weekends, we are most of the time performing better than expected, just because we arrive in FP1 and have a very solid base with the car. We get to qualifying and we do the job.
"It feels good. Tomorrow [Sprint Shootout and the Sprint Race] might be a bit more difficult because people will learn from today and they will feel a bit better tomorrow in the car, but whatever. I'll give everything to be on pole again."