Verstappen pinning hopes on hard tyre gambit

Max Verstappen will be starting tomorrow's 70th Anniversary Grand Prix from fourth place on the grid - but crucially, he'll be on the harder compound tyres than any of those around him.

Red Bull gambled on putting him on the white-wall compound for Q2 and he did enough to squeak through into the final round despite it being the slowest of the tyres made available to teams by Pirelli.

It's the most durable of the compounds, and given the dramatic end to ladt week's race when several cars suffered tyre failures during the British Grand Prix, that might give him a significant advantage.

• Bottas edges Hamilton for pole, Hulkenberg third fastest!

:Starting P4 is of course not perfect but the cars in front did a good job and Q3 was pretty tricky as the wind switched around and unbalanced us a bit," he said.

"I felt strongly about using the hard tyre for the race start as we are already on softer compounds this weekend and the medium was last week’s soft, which wasn’t great in that race.

"With warmer temperatures this weekend I like this option. It was just a matter of making it through to Q3 on the hard tyre which we just about did.

"I don’t know what starting on the hard tyre tomorrow will give us," he admitted. “I just hope that I can have a clean start on the hard tyre.

"It depends on the first lap and safety cars but hopefully it will be positive and it is at least different to everyone else in the top ten.

"I don’t think it’s going to be that bad compared to what they [the other drivers] are starting on.

"Of course, you might lose a little bit in the initial launch but I think it’s going to be better for the first stint," he said.

"My start last week was good, even compared to the cars behind me who were on softs, so we just need to make sure we have a good launch again.

"To be honest, I don’t expect too many issues with cars behind me," he continued. "At least it’s different to what other people are doing around me so we'll see if we can do a better job.

"It is still a long race tomorrow and our race pace is normally more competitive, we just don’t have the qualifying mode that Mercedes do," he added. "The goal is still to be on the podium.

Even though he reverted to the soft tyres for the final round, the Dutch driver lost out on third place to Racing Point's Nico Hulkenberg - but he wasn't feeling at all frustrated about that surprise turn of events.

"They have been competitive the whole weekend already," he said. "I am happy for Nico. He should have been already on the grid normally

"Now he has an opportunity to show his pace," he added. "I hope that this will give him a seat in F1 next year, who knows?"

Verstappen's teammate Alex Albon had a more difficult time in qualifying and at one point looked at risk of failing to get beyond Q1 after running wide at Chapel on his first run of the afternoon.

The Thai driver did manage to bounce back, and ended up making it through to the final top ten pole shoot-out for the first time since Styria. Even so he was evidently disappointed to only make it onto the grid in ninth place.

He set his initial pace on a worn set of mediums and then took a new set of softer tyres for his final run - and was disappointed not to pick up more speed. "I’m obviously not happy with P9," he said.

"It's just tricky. It feels like we go out and it's always something different," Albon explained. "To be honest it didn't feel terrible and we did a pretty good lap on an old set of mediums in Q3

“I was pretty optimistic going into the last set," he continued. “I was feeling comfortable and it was looking good up until the final run in Q3 when we went from mediums to softs and I experienced a very different car balance.

"I was just struggling a little bit, it felt a little bit different to the previous run and I didn’t improve on a new soft, compared to an old medium. Need to do some work.

"Some teams are able to get the soft tyre to work and we struggled with it today, so we need to understand why," he added. "Maybe also with the wind."

Last week he had a strong time in the race to finish in the points, and he's hoping that will be true again on Sunday.

“We do, we do, so that’s positive,” Albon confirmed when he asked whether he felt that the Red Bull had good race pace. "We showed we had good race pace last weekend..

“It will be a bit of a better race tomorrow I think because there’s more strategy to play for tomorrow.

"The plan tomorrow is to get the most out of our race pace, make up positions and get the job done," he added. "We will see."

Gallery: The beautiful wives and girlfriends of F1 drivers

Keep up to date with all the F1 news via Facebook and Twitter