Verstappen reacts to ‘incredible’ first pole of season as he sets out target for Bahrain GP in Malaysia

Max Verstappen has hailed his first pole position of the season at the Bahrain Grand Prix in Malaysia as “pretty incredible”, with the Dutchman keen to convert the result into a maiden 2026 victory.

Red Bull faced a more challenging start to the campaign than their rivals at the front, leaving the squad in fourth place of the Teams’ Championship with a significant deficit to the top three.

The Milton Keynes-based outfit have enjoyed an upturn in form of late, however, with Verstappen only missing out on a win at last weekend’s Azerbaijan Grand Prix by less than two tenths – and this level of performance looked to have continued as F1 returned to Sepang.

After setting the pace in both Q1 and Q2, Verstappen went fastest again during Q3 to seal pole position with a lap time of 1m 35.130s, putting him nearly three tenths clear of closest challenger Lewis Hamilton.

The four-time World Champion reflected on the journey that Red Bull have been on to this point as he commented after the session: “It’s fantastic.

“We’ve been trying many Grands Prix to get pole, sometimes a bit closer than others, but to finally get it from where we started the season, it’s pretty incredible.”

Pushed on whether this could be where he finally scores his first win of the season, Verstappen responded: “I’m happy with today and for sure I’m going to try to win tomorrow. When you start first, that’s the target.”

Verstappen shared further reflections on the result later and admitted that, despite his strong pace throughout Friday and Saturday, it was still difficult to know whether pole might be on the cards.

“It's always a little bit hard to tell after practice, not knowing of course what the other people are doing,” he explained. “But I think from Q1 onwards, you see that you are in the running and, yeah, the car has been working really well for me.

“I think in general for us, it's a proud moment. We had a tough start to the year, and then I think we really put a lot of good stuff on the car and we really understood, I think, our car a lot better, the behaviour of the car.

“And yeah, it's for sure an amazing moment, I think, for everyone here to get our first pole.

“[Being back in the fight for pole is] what we want as a team also, so for sure very happy with that and I hope of course tomorrow that we can have a strong race.”