P1racenews AI automatic summary:
Max Verstappen has a huge opportunity in the United States GP to take a significant chunk of points out of his deficit to Oscar Piastri.
Max Verstappen has revealed that his late qualifying scare at the United States Grand Prix was caused by some cars in front of him leaving too much of a gap, making him run out of time to set a final lap in Q3. He had initially taken provisional pole after the first set of hot laps in Q3 but failed to set a second push lap before the chequered flag. This incident marked the second time during the weekend that a Red Bull car was unable to complete a final lap in a section of qualifying, following Yuki Tsunoda’s elimination in Sprint qualifying. Despite the setback, Verstappen’s opening hot lap in the final part of qualifying was still enough to secure pole position comfortably. The Dutchman mentioned that the cars in front were leaving substantial gaps and one pair even set purple sectors on the out lap, which led to the unfortunate timing issue.
