“Not a bad place to start tomorrow": Max Verstappen shares his feelings after losing pole position to George Russell in F1 Canadian GP

Max Verstappen claimed that P2 was not a bad place to start for the main race on Sunday after his final Q3 lap was identical to the pole position of George Russell. The Red Bull driver displayed some amazing inherent pace once again as he took his RB20 to the front row at the Circuit Gilles Villeneuve on Saturday, June 8.

Both Verstappen and Russell set the identical timed lap of 1:12:000 in the Q3 session but it was the Mercedes driver who took the pole position since he set the lap first.

On his team radio, Max Verstappen was a bit disappointed as he mentioned to his race engineer GP Lambiase that he ran out of tires, saying:

"Ahh, ran out of tires... F*ck. Ahh man.. S1 was good, tsk.. then I just ran out of tires"

To which Lambiase replied:

"It's P2. Good effort and very, very close to pole."

The three-time world champion was able to see the silver lining from the session and concluded:

"We tried everything we could.. Not a bad place to start tomorrow."

Max Verstappen analyzes his P2 finish at the Canadian GP qualifying

Max Verstappen stated that he accepted the situation of identical timed laps and starting behind George Russell and shared that it was an encouraging qualifying session for him.

In his post-quali interview with F1TV, the Red Bull driver said:

"It’s how it is, right. I think overall we still had a good qualifying. The whole weekend has been still a bit tricky for us, but to be P2, I’d take it. Going into qualifying I would have definitely taken that."

"So that it was that close at the end makes it really exciting for tomorrow as well. I felt good in Monaco but it was just not our track, it was not happening for us. This weekend again we didn’t have a great build up to today."

The Dutch driver added that the main race on Sunday would be 'interesting' with the tire situation with the weather also playing its part, adding:

"But I think it will be quite an interesting race with the tyres tomorrow, how they are going to fare. The weather as well – it keeps on coming in and out, the rain. So hopefully it will be very exciting."

Max Verstappen is eyeing a hat-trick of wins at the Canadian GP, having previously reigned supreme in 2022 and 2023.