Horner: Best in the world Verstappen's greatest lap for Suzuka pole

Verstappen claimed his 41st career pole on Saturday at Suzuka, despite Red Bull spending the weekend making sweeping changes to the Red Bull RB21 in a bid to optimise performance according to Horner.

After an intriguing session at Suzuka, Horner told Sky F1 reporters: "We’ve turned this car upside down this weekend. Max has been working hard with his engineering team, and they were tuning out laps and preparation laps to get the car in the window. He’s just gone and delivered the most amazing lap and nailed it.

"I could see it in Sector 2. It was all going to be about that last chicane, which hasn’t been our strongest point this weekend. And he nailed it," said Horner, of Verstappen's 41st pole position in Formula 1.

He added: "We’ve moved around weight distributions, aero balances, wing levels—literally almost everything: the roll bars, springs, everything on the car that you can play with. The team, with Max, have been relentless chasing after it.

"It was completely unexpected to get that pole position today. That was probably one of the laps of Max’s career. I mean, that was absolutely outstanding. We know Max is the best in the world, and he’s driving with such authority.

"We managed to get the car into the window. You’ve got to have a car under you, particularly in Sector 1, which started to come alive for him. Turn 9, we’ve been struggling at all weekend. And again, we managed to get the balance into a better window there. And then suddenly, you know, the lap time started to come," revealed Horner.

Verstappen's best effort denied McLaren a front-row lockout. The #1 Red Bull was a mere 0.012s quicker than Lando Norris in P2 and 0.044s ahead of Oscar Piastri in P3.

Saturday marked Yuki Tsunoda’s first Qualifying session as a Red Bull Racing driver, but the Japanese racer was unable to advance past Q2 in front of his home crowd. He will start the GP from P15.

Horner reflected on Tsunoda’s performance: "A great shame for Yuki today because actually his Q1 was very competitive. He was within a tenth. It was building nicely. In Q2 he actually didn’t go quicker than Q1 and he had a big moment at the start of his lap on the new tyre.

"By the time you’ve given away three, four-tenths, you’re never going to get that back around here. So it was a shame because the qualifying doesn’t represent the job that he’s done up until this point," acknowledged the Red Bull boss.

Looking ahead to Sunday’s race, Horner admitted uncertainty with rain in the forecast: "I don’t know what’s going to happen. It’s supposed to rain in the morning, then maybe dry out for the race. But you know what? Starting from first place is the best place to be here.

"The McLarens are quick. We know that to keep them behind, it’s going to be very tough in the race. We’ll worry about that this evening and tomorrow, but for the moment, we’ll celebrate this pole position," declared Horner, savouring his team’s 104th pole position start in Formula 1.