Imola GP 2024: Max Verstappen says it is ‘very special’ to equal Ayrton Senna’s poles record

The runs of Verstappen and Senna both span two seasons – the Brazilian’s was across the end of 1988 and start of 1989; Verstappen’s dates back to the final race of last season in Abu Dhabi.

But despite such a strong run, Verstappen said his pole was unexpected as Red Bull had been struggling to make their car behave to his liking in all three practice sessions before qualifying.

Verstappen said: “I honestly went into qualifying and I was like: ‘Well, if we can get a top five, I would be happy,’ because this weekend has been really difficult.

“In the last couple of years, this has definitely been one of the best (turnarounds), I would say. It’s been a while that I’ve felt like we’ve been that far off.”

His struggles leading up to qualifying make it difficult to predict form in Sunday’s race, which starts at 14:00 BST. In Friday practice, Leclerc was the fastest driver in the race-simulation runs, followed by the McLarens, and Verstappen was a long way off the pace.

Verstappen said: “Yesterday was terrible in long run and short run. Naturally, I think with the balance that I had in qualifying, it will be better. But I have no clue against McLaren. They looked very strong yesterday in their long run. So hopefully, yeah, we can do something similar.”

Norris and Piastri both warned about the difficulty of overtaking around Imola, a fact exacerbated by the decision of governing body the FIA to shorten the zone in which drivers can use the the DRS overtaking aid by 100 metres this year.