Max Verstappen led the way for Red Bull Racing in Saturday afternoon's qualifying session when he became the best of the rest behind the two Mercedes and Ferrari's when he recorded the fifth best time of the session.
The young Dutchman extracted all he could from the new upgraded RB13 and he believes he did all he could to get to P5. Although he was no higher up the grid than he was in Russia, he was a lot closer in regard to times and the hope is to improve on the upgraded package as much as he can over the coming races.
"That was a very good qualifying, it went very smoothly and we had no issues and I think the lap was spot on. The car was definitely the best I have had all season and I was very pleased with the balance today. To be just under six tenths back from pole position is a good achievement and we should be very happy with that compared to one and a half seconds back in Sochi,” he said.
"The team has worked really hard to get the updates ready for the car so a massive thank you to them. We have been studying the upgrades all week to understand the package and how they would work, once we got the setup sorted and I was able to get comfortable it resulted in a good combination and successful Qualifying. It is a good step forward and has given us a solid platform to build on for the rest of the season. As always we will keep pushing and try to close the gap even more.”
"It is always nice to come back to Barcelona, I have driven a lot of laps here and it has been kind to me. Like we saw last year, you never know what can happen on race day here, our long run pace looks ok so let's wait and see."
