Categories: F1 News, Reports and Race ResultsToro Rosso

Buoyant Verstappen confident of points from P7

Max Verstappen is confident he can score points starting from seventh place after maximising his qualifying potential at the Austrian Grand Prix.

During a tricky qualifying session which started on a drying track, Verstappen was the only Toro Rosso to make it through to Q3 and will line up P7 for tomorrow's race. After ending the day as the lead Renault-powered car, Verstappen says he is pleased to secure the best result he feels the STR10 was capable of.

"I think the whole weekend has been very good!" Verstappen said. "I think we really maximised the car in qualifying.

"P7 was the maximum. To find three tenths on this track isn’t easy."

And Verstappen believes Toro Rosso has the race pace to capitalise on starting inside the top ten, having dropped away rapidly from a P6 grid slot in the Spanish Grand Prix.

"I think we made some mistakes in Barcelona and we were too conservative on the tyres, so we can push more on them. Afterwards we have improved our race pace. Even in Canada we were quite fast but we couldn’t get past. Now we are in a better starting position for the race."

Click here for the gallery of the Formula Una girls at the Austrian Grand Prix

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Andrew Lewin

Andrew first became a fan of Formula 1 during the time when Michael Schumacher and Damon Hill were stepping into the limelight after the era of Alain Prost, Nigel Mansell and Aryton Senna. He's been addicted ever since, and has been writing about the sport now for nearly a quarter of a century for a number of online news sites. He's also written professionally about GP2 (now Formula 2), GP3, IndyCar, World Rally Championship, MotoGP and NASCAR. In his other professional life, Andrew is a freelance writer, social media consultant, web developer/programmer, and digital specialist in the fields of accessibility, usability, IA, online communities and public sector procurement. He worked for many years in magazine production at Bauer Media, and for over a decade he was part of the digital media team at the UK government's communications department. Born and raised in Essex, Andrew currently lives and works in south-west London.