Verstappen: 'better than expected' sprint bodes well for GP

A dominant performance for Max Verstappen in Saturday's sprint race in Austin gave the 2023 world champion reason for optimism that there is another strong result to come in Sunday's United States Grand Prix.

Verstappen took pole position for the 19-lap race despite having a few problems and a big spin in the Sprint Showdown. He was still complaining of driveability when it came to Saturday evening's sprint.

Not that anyone could tell, as he quickly dealt with a challenge from Ferrari's Charles Leclerc into the first corner and then gradually pulled away at an average of half a second a lap from Mercedes' Lewis Hamilton.

“We had a strong day out there today," he commented after the end of the event. "It was quite tight at the start with Charles but after that we could focus on our own race.

"The pace of the car was really good, a bit better than we expected, and we looked after our tyres quite well," he added.

• Read also: Verstappen cruises to sprint win over Hamilton in Austin

With the full-length Grand Prix following hot on the heels of the shorter sprint, Verstappen said that the team had picked up some significant pointers on how to handle Sunday's main event.

"Starting in P6 tomorrow will be interesting," he said. "We'll try and stay out of trouble on the first lap and then we'll take it step by step making our way through the field. Hopefully we can have some fun out there."

“It was a strong sprint race for us and will provide a lot of data around performance of the tyres and our opponents," added Red Bull team principal Christian Horner. "Max drove a well controlled race.

"This sets us up well for tomorrow. Yes, we are starting further down the grid than we would usually like, but you can overtake here. There are opportunities and we look forward to seeing what’s to come."

While Verstappen has already clinched the 2023 driver's crown, his team mate Sergio Perez is still having to work hard to secure the runners-up position from Hamilton meaning he can't afford to simply have 'fun' tomorrow.

Perez started from P7 today and managed to pass Carlos Sainz who was the only driver on soft tyres but then got stuck behind Lando Norris.

The Mexican will start the Grand Prix from ninth and will have two Alpines ahead of him as well as Leclerc, Norris, Hamilton and George Russell to content with if he's to score big points.

"Tomorrow will be an interesting one, with a lot of interesting battles out there," he speculated.

"Today the degradation was a bit higher than I ideally wanted, so we were not able to push how we would have wanted to and got caught in a lot of dirty air.

"We need to sort the degradation issues for the race because that will be important, because we may be doing things that are hurting us there.

"We have to make sure we understand where we can improve the balance come tomorrow too and work hard overnight, we need more pace than we showed today. We have some tricks we can do and have some good directions to go in."

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