Verstappen reveals Red Bull 'improvements' despite pole miss

F1 championship leader Max Verstappen remained upbeat despite missing out on pole position for the Italian Grand Prix.

The Dutchman narrowly lost out to Ferrari's Carlos Sainz who bettered his lap time by just 0.013s at the end of Q3, meaning Verstappen has now been credited with pole position just once out of the last four race weekends.

Having matched Sebastian Vettel's consecutive win tally at the Dutch Grand Prix one week ago, Verstappen is now aiming to make the record his own this weekend with a 10th victory in a row.

But the passionate Tifosi, who booed the Red Bull driver during his post-session interview, will be hoping the streak will be broken by Sainz or Charles Leclerc, who starts third.

Good improvements

Having struggled through practice, Verstappen said of his session: “It was good, we made some good improvements compared to yesterday.

“In qualifying, you could see that every qualifying session was very tight. I’m happy to be second today.

“It’s nice to see. We’ll try to win the race.

“Normally we have a quick race car, but first we’ll enjoy today and then focus on tomorrow.”