Verstappen expects McLaren fight in qualifying

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Mex Verstappen believes Toro Rosso will be fighting with McLaren for a spot in Q3 in qualifying at the Russian Grand Prix on Saturday.

Toro Rosso struggled with set-up during Friday practice, with Verstappen complaining of "quite extreme" oversteer across the two sessions. With just one hour of practice remaining, Verstappen says a lot of work needs to be done as he expects the likes of Williams and Force India to improve in qualifying.

“I think in general the Mercedes cars they have this extra boost in qualifying so they will still move up a bit further," Verstappen said. "With McLaren I don’t know, yeah they look quite competitive so we will be close to them, it will definitely be a fight to get into Q3 because in general at the moment I think we are lacking a bit of pace.”

And Verstappen expects qualifying in Russia to be a real challenge for Toro Rosso following Friday's struggles.

“At the moment I think this will be one of the most difficult ones but we have to work on the set-up and yeah I think from our side if we can improve that we easily gain four-to-five tenths. There’s still a lot of work to do.”

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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.