Max Verstappen: "Even though it was a more difficult weekend, achieving pole position today was great.

"I didn't really expect to make it on pole, but we kept on making steady improvements throughout qualifying and I felt able to push a little bit better. Over the weekend, we have been struggling with the graining and have had a lot of things to figure out, but we just needed to keep on fine tuning the car with the Team. The balance of the car got better throughout; as we went through the session it felt easier to manage and I'm very happy with the laps we did in Q3 and surprised myself. We obviously had all the information from Q1 and Q2 and I think we achieved two very good laps. It is a bit of an unknown tomorrow as it is always easy to make a mistake here and it is harder to manage the tyres. Although the weekend has been a bit tough for us and I don't think tomorrow will be an easy race, to still be on pole with the difficulties that we had is something we can be very proud of."

Sergio Perez: "It was quite tricky out there; I think that soft tyre was making things very difficult for us and getting up to speed on that set is quite hard but in the end it really worked well and we were able to extract the maximum from the tyre. I didn't get the maximum from my final lap and lost a tenth at turn one, I think P2 was achievable, but I am still pleased with P3, I am on the clean side of the grid and can fight from there. This is a good starting point, I am confident, I want to get a strong start and get Carlos off the line. The degradation is a lot higher than last year here, it will be a challenge with Ferrari and it will come down to strategy and management of the tyres. Hopefully we get the result we want, that would be very nice for the Team."

Christian Horner: "I really thought Ferrari had the upper hand today. But we delivered when it mattered on that last run and that's certainly the first time that we've actually managed to nail sector three. All throughout the weekend, including qualifying, we've been giving away either a tenth or a tenth and a half in sector three, but today we finally managed to get the balance right. Max did two great laps there, both of which were good enough for Pole position. Checo did equally well, delivering a great lap as well to put himself third on the grid, so overall a great performance from the Team today."

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