Verstappen happy to reward fans with new record

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Mas Verstappen took inspiration from thousands of Dutch and Belgian fans cheering him on at Spa-Francorchamps, and was thrilled to reward them with a new record-breaking performance.

Already the youngest-ever driver to win a Grand Prix in Formula One, Verstappen is now also the youngest driver to qualify on the front row after coming within two tenths of a second of pole winner Nico Rosberg on Saturday.

"It’s great to break a record, but I want to break other records," he said. "I’m very pleased to be second here in front of my fans, it’s just a great motivation when you see them next to the track.

"I’m just very happy to be on the front row in Spa," said the 18-year-old. "It’s great to drive in front of your fans, to show yourself."

Verstappen has been the fastest man in FP2 on Friday, but a problem with his ECU left him sidelined on Saturday morning. Although the team were able to fix the issue without incurring a penalty, the loss of track time at such a crucial point inevitably impacted his qualifying session.

"I think it was even more frustrating for myself that I couldn’t get the laps in," he said. "I couldn’t get my references in for qualifying but luckily it was not a big issue, we solved it in time and from there on it was just a really good qualifying.

“You can always do a better job but I think also Nico could have done a better lap, it’s always when you put everything together but I think in the end to be so close to them on a track with some long straights, we can be very pleased with that.

"The whole weekend has been very smooth, even though I had some issues this morning but from there on, the mechanics did a great job and in qualifying the car was working really well as you could see in sector two.”

As a result of qualifying, Verstappen will be starting the race on the short-life supersoft tyres, something that the driver says was entirely intentional.

"I decided together with the team that I wanted to run the super-soft so I think that’s the best strategy to go into tomorrow," he said. “To start on the super-soft and see where we end up after a few laps.

"We have some different strategies out there but I think at the end of the day maybe we have to box a bit earlier but afterwards I think there are still a lot of laps to go and we’ll see what happens."

QUALIFYING REPORT: Rosberg edges Verstappen and Raikkonen for pole

Silbermann says ... Spa too hot

Romain Grosjean column: More motivated than ever

Chris Medland's 2016 Belgian Grand Prix preview

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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.