Max Verstappen achieved twelve pole positions in the 2023 Formula 1 season. Perhaps his best pole lap came during the Monaco Grand Prix. The Red Bull Racing driver made up no less than three tenths in sector 3 alone and he did this by hitting the wall on purpose.
At the start of the season, Fernando Alonso was very strong and competed for prizes every race weekend. He finished third in Bahrain, Saudi Arabia and Australia, before narrowly missing out in fourth place in Azerbaijan. The Spaniard was back on the podium in Miami in third position. The AMR23 car was also strong again in Monaco. Alonso clocked a 1:11.449 in Q3 to take provisional pole position, but Verstappen still had to cross the line. He was two tenths above Alonso’s time after sector 2 and therefore had to give everything due to Piscine and Rascasse. By hitting the wall on purpose, the Dutchman was able to make up three tenths and thus take pole with a lead of 0.084 seconds.
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Full on the limit
“I noticed when I went through the bend before the last sector started that I was faster than I was [eerder] had driven, but that it wouldn’t be enough,” Verstappen started at Viaplay. “So I thought: ‘We’ll just go full on the limit and we’ll see. Either pole or we’ll hang it in the wall’. Tapped a few walls, kissed a bit, but of course it was a very beautiful sector. When I parked the car and took off my helmet, I was still shaking a little. Then you know that your heart rate was of course high as well as the adrenaline to get the best out of it. Of course you notice that you are still shaking a bit.”
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Wall bounced along
According to Verstappen, kissing the wall was not about luck: “You build that up over a weekend. During training you of course try to get closer, but you don’t want to do any damage, because it’s just about driving laps in training. There is one chicane [Piscine]and I have been against the wall there a few times, so I know from experience that if I… [de muur daar] at a certain point, you can push it in a little. And it came out perfectly on that last lap when I hit it. When I entered, I saw that one wheel came back a bit, so of course it almost broke off, but that the wall did bounce a bit, so that turned out perfectly.” Verstappen admits that hitting That wall does not always end well. The Dutchman crashed there in qualifying in 2016 and in Free Training 3 in 2018.
