Max starts Malaysian GP from third: "More chances in the race"

Published on 01 October 2016 by Stefan Meens

Max Verstappen will start the Malaysian Grand Prix from third on the grid. Behind the Mercedes dominated front row – Lewis Hamilton took pole – the Dutchman out qualified his team mate Daniel Ricciardo, who joins him on the second row.

“I'm very happy with third”, said Max. “The weekend has been good so far and the long runs are looking positive. We had room to improve our short runs, but today in qualifying it worked out. In the end, we weren't too far away so I'm looking forward to Sunday. I think we'll have more chances in the race.”

Previewing the Grand Prix, in which he has an extra set of the soft tyres, Max acknowledged the team have now more options. “We'll start on the soft and what happens after, really depends on the temperature. The balance on the softs was good but I think it went well on all the other compounds too. So we'll see.”

In first part of qualifying, it is business as usual with the front runners all making the cut. Nevertheless, Max takes to the track for a second run – this time on softs as opposed to his opener on the medium Pirellis – to cover the thread of dropping out. Fernando Alonso, Jolyon Palmer, the Manors and the Saubers are eliminated after the firsts part of qualifying.

Q2 sees all the top teams complete just one flying lap. Mercedes lead the way, followed by both Red Bulls and the two Ferraris. Both Toro Rossos, the Haas F1s, Kevin Magnussen and Valtteri Bottas strand in the second part of qualifying.

Max' first lap in Q3 is excellent, enough to secure third in the end. For a while it looked that P2 was realistic after Nico Rosberg made a mistake in his first run. The German then drove a clean run, lapping the Sepang circuit two tenths quicker than Max, but still half a second of pole. In his final run, Max does not improve his time but hangs on to start the Malaysian Grand Prix from third, lining up next to Daniel Ricciardo and ahead of the two Ferraris

Malaysian Grand Prix - Sepang International Circuit - Saturday 1 October

QUALIFYING RESULTS:

01 Lewis Hamilton      Mercedes                    1:34.444 1:33.046 1:32.850 
02 Nico Rosberg        Mercedes                    1:34.460 1:33.609 1:33.264 
03 Max Verstappen      Red Bull Racing TAG Heuer   1:35.443 1:33.775 1:33.420 
04 Daniel Ricciardo    Red Bull Racing TAG Heuer   1:35.079 1:33.888 1:33.467 
05 Sebastian Vettel    Ferrari                     1:34.557 1:33.972 1:33.584 
06 Kimi Räikkönen      Ferrari                     1:34.556 1:33.903 1:33.632 
07 Sergio Perez        Force India Mercedes        1:35.068 1:34.538 1:34.319 
08 Nico Hulkenberg     Force India Mercedes        1:34.827 1:34.441 1:34.489 
09 Jenson Button       McLaren Honda               1:35.267 1:34.431 1:34.518 
10 Felipe Massa        Williams Mercedes           1:35.267 1:34.422 1:34.671 
11 Valtteri Bottas     Williams Mercedes           1:35.166 1:34.577 
12 Romain Grosjean     Haas Ferrari                1:35.400 1:35.001 
13 Esteban Gutierrez   Haas Ferrari                1:35.658 1:35.097 
14 Kevin Magnussen     Renault                     1:35.593 1:35.277 
15 Daniil Kvyat        Toro Rosso Ferrari          1:35.695 1:35.369 
16 Carlos Sainz        Toro Rosso Ferrari          1:35.605 1:35.374 
17 Marcus Ericsson     Sauber Ferrari              1:35.816 
18 Felipe Nasr         Sauber Ferrari              1:35.949 
19 Jolyon Palmer       Renault                     1:35.999 
20 Esteban Ocon        MRT Mercedes                1:36.451 
21 Pascal Wehrlein     MRT Mercedes                1:36.587 
22 Fernando Alonso     McLaren Honda               1:37.155 

Click here to enter our competition with a chance to win a Max Verstappen 1:43 scale model!