It's been a great start to the F1 season for Red Bull with Max Verstappen claiming pole position, with Christian Horner pleased with how his driver dealt with some early adversity during qualifying. The Dutchman beat out Lewis Hamilton to pole but it all could have gone wrong after the Red Bull man looked to have damaged part of the bottom of his car after running over a curb during Q1. "He smacked the bottom of the car pretty hard and because they run so low we lost a couple of bits of carbon under the front of the car there and maybe he's carrying about a tenths worth of damage through the rest of the sessions," Horner told Sky Sports. "So you think in the first part of Q1 when things aren't the fresh, you think oh no but he's handled that incredibly well. He definitely felt that. He's obviously sitting on it as he's hurtling over the curb. So he's responded very well that's that's just step one." As for Sunday's race, Horner hasn't lost sight of the threat posed by Mercedes and Hamilton. "It's going to be very tight, and I think that the whole team's work tremendously hard over the winter to get ourselves into this position," Horner continued. "Honda have done a stellar job as well and Mercedes, look at how they've turned up. "Everybody was writing them off over the last couple of weeks and they're right there and they're going to be right there in the race again tomorrow. It's going to be a massive challenge for us to beat them but hopefully we're starting from the best possible place. I can't wait to see how this all pans out."
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