Belgian-Dutch race car driver Max Verstappen, 24, is presently driving for Red Bull Racing in Formula One. He is the off-road racing legend Jos Verstappen’s son. The youngest driver to ever participate in Formula One, Max Verstappen, earned his Formula One start at the early age of only 17 years and 176 days.
Despite winning in Zandvoort, the current leading driver lost the pole position to Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc in Monza and will drive behind him on the final race day in Italy.
How did Leclerc earn the pole position from Max Verstappen at Monza?
Charles Leclerc claimed that in order to outperform Max Verstappen, he was forced to take greater risks around the two Lesmo bends and during his last Q3 lap, Leclerc did not receive a tow from teammate Carlos Sainz Jr. as the two Ferraris were separated by Lando Norris and did not finish up out on the circuit together as both drivers admitted that they increased their level of risk-taking in attempt to set comparable lap times for pole.
Ferrari practiced tow in the first round of F1 qualifying at the Italian Grand Prix at Monza, with Carlos Sainz helping Charles Leclerc to take the lead after producing a 1m21.280s lap with only 0.068s separating the two.
QUALIFYING CLASSIFICATION @Charles_Leclerc takes his eighth pole of the season! #ItalianGP #F1 pic.twitter.com/xhIYae12fg
— Formula 1 (@F1) September 10, 2022
However, Max Verstappen of Red Bull completed a quicker lap with a time of 1m20.922s, finishing in front of Leclerc and Sainz and all the Aston Martin and Haas racers were eliminated amid lap deletions, and replays revealed a major milestone for Mick Schumacher at Turn 1.
The Monegasque driver called securing pole at Monza “incredible” after setting the quickest time in qualifying and beating Verstappen by 0.145 seconds.
Following the final pole position, Charles Leclerc expressed profound satisfaction by saying, “It wasn’t an easy qualifying session, I knew there was quite a lot of potential in the car but didn’t put everything together.”
The Ferrari driver then continued, “I knew that in this last lap in Q3 I had to put everything together and I managed to do it. So I’m very happy with the lap, very happy with the performance, it’s been a great weekend up until now, the feeling with the car is amazing and I really hope that we can do just like 2019 tomorrow.”
Carlos Sainz Jr. (1m20.429s), Sergio Perez (1m21.206s), and Sir Lewis Hamilton (1m21.524s) finished ahead of Max Verstappen (1m20.306s), although all of them had penalties and also George Russell (1m21.542s), a Mercedes driver, will finish second in the race on Sunday.
