Max Verstappen doesn't see why starting from sixth on the grid on Sunday should mean he won't be contending for victory in the Belgian Grand Prix at Spa-Francorchamps.
Verstappen survived a scare when he nearly missed the cut at the end of the second found of qualifying on a drying track, and went on to finish the day eight tenths quicker than the rest of the field in Q3.
But he still won't start the race from pole because of a five place grid drop incurred by taking a new gearbox this weekend, putting him above the allotted number for the season as a whole.
Red Bull decided to take the penalty here because it's a good track for Verstappen to make up places in the race on the 7km circuit.
Last year he overcome a number of penalties that saw him start from P14, to still manage an impressive victory by 17s over his team mate Sergio Perez after 44 laps. He sees no reason why he can't do something similar again this year.
"Last year I had more penalties and we could still win the race," Verstappen pointed out. "That is still the target on Sunday."
Verstappen will drop to P5 with Charles Leclerc taking pole and Perez alongside the Ferrari on the front row, followed by Lewis Hamilton and Carlos Sainz
"I knew I had to drop back on Sunday with the penalty, but that's the best I could do today," Verstappen acknowledged.
Rain had been a problem earlier on Friday, but it had stopped before the start of qualifying and the track dried out as the session progressed.
"We knew that the car was quick and I think even with these tricky conditions today, luckily we could show that again," he said.
"Sector two was still a bit damp so there was only one dry line in some corners," he told reporters in parc ferme afterward. "You had to do a bit of an alternative line to normal in the dry.
"It was all about feeling confident and basically risking everything in that final run to get more lap-time."
But that confidence was briefly lacking in Q2, when a deleted lap and a shaky final run barely succeeded in putting him P10 to make the final cut.
"I was very lucky to finish in P10," he admitted. "It was very tight and the conditions were very tricky, the track was really drying and I just didn't have that confidence in Q2.
"In Q3 you have two tyre sets so you know that you can push a little bit more, risk a little bit more," he added. "That is what we did on that final lap."
Verstappen had known he had exceeded track limits during an earlier flying lap in Q2. “I went wide, I went over the white line. What should I do?,” he asked over the Red Bull team radio.
“Just keep up the pace Max," his long suffering race engineer Gianpiero Lambiase responded, to which Verstappen protested: “But my lap will be cancelled, mate!"
“There’s not a lot of margin to complete the push-slow-push Max,” Lambiase advised, to which Verstappen countered with “Why don’t we just push two, then?”
“No, tyres will be too hot,” Lambiase replied, aware that he needed Verstappen at top speed on a full ERS battery for his final push. “You’ll be fine, just complete the lap.”
Verstappen completed a slow cool-down run and crossed the line with just under ten seconds remaining for his final lap getting him into Q3, but the near miss resulted in an expletive-laden exchange over the Red Bull team radio.
“I should have just ***ing pushed two laps in a row, like I said," he complained, to which Lambiase calmly responded: “So you are through, Max." Not mollified, Verstappen said: I don’t give a ****, it’s just **** execution."
“Okay," replied Lambiase. "And then when the track was two seconds quicker for your final lap and you didn’t have any energy left, how would that have gone down? You tell me what you want to do in Q3, and we’ll do it. Let me know."
In the end, the big margin he achieved over Leclerc in Q3 by following Lambiase's advice was enough even to convince Verstappen that all was well after all.
“Whoa! Nice gap, that!” Verstappen said. “At least we had a good Q3. Sorry to GP for being so on the rant," to which Lambiase replied: "Slowly getting used to it Max."
Before Sunday's race, Verstappen and the rest of the drivers will be focused on the sprint qualifying and race, with the weather once again forecast to be changeable.
"Let's see tomorrow what the weather will do and what kind of racing we will have," he said.
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