Interview
Verschoor aiming to maximise Lusail Sprint Race to keep title hopes alive
Richard Verschoor was disappointed to wind up 10th in Lusail Qualifying, believing that a stronger result was on the cards up until the second runs in the session.
Teammate Oliver Goethe had taken P1 in the session before a grid penalty demoted him, but Verschoor struggled to match his effort, pointing to traffic ultimately preventing him from achieving a similar effort.
Speaking after the session on Friday night, the MP Motorsport driver said he was out of the P1 fight, but a higher grid position was possible.
READ MORE: Goethe handed post-Qualifying grid penalty
“It was very messy, not happy at all with the result,” he admitted afterwards. “To be honest, Ollie did an outstanding job, he did a superb job, but it also shows that I should have done a better job.
“It was quite messy especially on the second set with a lot of traffic. I don’t know why so many people were out of sequence, but it really didn’t help me.
“I was a bit compromised, but I didn’t show the full potential, even if I wouldn’t have been fighting for pole.”
Looking back at the session in more detail, the Dutchman said that the traffic he encountered disrupted what had been a positive session up to that point.
Afterwards, he was unable to recover and get back to where he felt he’d been earlier in Qualifying, and battled to P10 by the chequered flag.
“It was just the traffic on the second run. I was just not feeling the rhythm because of it. In this sport, it’s all about the details and the feeling. The feeling was just not there. Sometimes it happens, and I have to look for it.
“P1 in the Sprint is a bit of a positive, but it comes after a negative. It’s better than being P11, so let’s try to make the most out of it, score some points and we’ll go from there.”
Looking ahead to the remainder of the weekend and the title battle, the MP driver refused to count himself out of the reckoning at this stage of the weekend.
Verschoor said that he was remaining focused on maximising the Sprint Race on Saturday before taking stock of what would be required on Sunday to take the title fight to the finale around Yas Marina.
“Anything’s possible. I know we have a good race car here. Let’s see how the tyres behave. It will be quite an interesting race and in F2 you never know.
“At the moment, this means nothing in the Championship race. Tomorrow, we race and score points, and then we’ll add it up. Sometimes you just don’t know. I’d have preferred to be top three in Qualifying but it wasn’t meant to be today. Let’s hope it is in Abu Dhabi.”