Max Verstappen acknowledged that the lap that earned him pole position for the Miami sprint race “felt pretty terrible”.

The Red Bull driver won Saturday’s sprint race by a tenth of a second over Charles Leclerc, but he was visibly struggling with his car at times during his pole-winning lap.

Verstappen suffered a snap of oversteer at the exit of the chicane, costing him a tenth of a second to the Ferrari driver. He maintained pole position, but revealed to race engineer Gianpiero Lambiase after the session that his Ferrari felt “terrible”.

Verstappen stated after the session that his car’s handling had changed considerably from the earlier practice session to sprint qualifying.

“To be honest with you, it felt pretty terrible,” he went on to say.

Many other drivers reported difficulty with the track conditions at the end of qualifying, as they transitioned from medium to soft tire compounds.

“Maybe that last session was just incredibly difficult to get the tyres to work because already in SQ2 I didn’t feel great,” Verstappen stated in a statement. “In SQ3, I believe it just felt quite similar to me. I didn’t make much of an improvement on the softs, but we still finished first.

“Of course, I’ll gladly take it, but driving out there didn’t feel particularly joyful for some reason. In practice, it felt incredibly good. I felt quite comfortable and confident. Qualifying, not so much.”

Verstappen’s pole time was not the fastest in qualifying, which was set by Lando Norris in SQ2 on the medium compound. With the top 10 separated by just over eight tenths of a second, Verstappen said he was shocked to have qualified on pole.

“It might be the track layout a little bit,” he went on to say.

“After practice, I felt sure that we could truly battle for pole. Then in qualifying, it didn’t appear like that to me, but we still finished first. “I am not sure what happened to the other cars on the last lap.”