Verstappen: The race can be lost in Turn 1

On a gloomy and constantly wet afternoon in the moody Ardennes, less than a week after his childish tantrum-laden run to P5 in Hungary, Verstappen was his majestic self at Spa-Francorchamps, where he is vying for a fourth win in a row on Sunday.

Belgium is Verstappen's second home race, as it is his mother Sophie Kumpen's homeland, and he gave the partisan crowd an unforgettable show to end the session P1. His demotion to ten places is due to planned Power Unit-related penalties.

On Saturday at Spa-Francorchamps, Max was The Rain Master, King of the Rain. Much like Belgian motorsport maestro Jacky Ickx.

Reflecting on his session afterwards in parc ferme, Verstappen said: "It was a nice qualifying. Luckily the weather was okay. It was just raining a little bit and at least we could do a decent qualifying.

"Everything worked well. Every tyre set that we were on we could just do good lap times. I was thinking about Q3, not knowing if it was going to dry out, so I was trying to keep two new sets for Q3, and luckily we escaped Q1 and Q2," explained the World Champion.

Verstappen continued: "I could just do my laps and try to do clean lap times in the wet, which is always quite tricky. But [Sunday], of course, I know that it’s quite a different day. It’s going to be warmer, normally no rain, so it’s all about tyre degradation. We just need to make sure we’re good on that."

As for the penalty, Verstappen who has won from the midfield before said: "I know that I have to start ten places back so this was the best I could do today, and I go from there. I don’t know how quick we’re going to be. I hope that we can be in the mix to try to move forward.

"The race can be lost in Turn 1, so just need to see what happens at the start, naturally, and just go from there. It’s a very long race, it’s very hard on tyres and we just need to try to manage that as good as we can, and hopefully then we can be competitive in the race.

"We are not making it easy on ourselves and especially of course in the battle that we’re in. I know that today was a great day, but it’s in the wet, we need to be quick in the dry tomorrow. It’s going to be a tough battle.

"We’ll try to do the best we can. Hopefully, we can battle the Ferrari and Mercedes ahead, and if we have a bit of luck, maybe we can challenge the McLaren," ventured Verstappen, who has won seven GPs so far this season but has not won a race for the past month, since Spain to be precise.

Notably on his cool-down lap, a vastly different Verstappen (to the one last Sunday) addressed his team over the radio: "Let's see what we can do tomorrow. Today was a very good day. Well done everyone. Thank you to all the mechanics for working so late. I really appreciate it." What a difference a week makes!