Mark Hughes: Verstappen's high-wire gamble could've toppled McLaren

Having looked the quickest throughout practice, McLaren duly locked out the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix front row. But it wasn’t as straightforward as that makes it sound.

The wind made things tricky, especially when there was a Red Bull in which Max Verstappen was prepared to be bold. Running a lower wing than the others, the RB20 was quick if you caught the wind’s favours – and Verstappen being Verstappen, he was prepared to be very bold in trying to steal time from the drivers of the more secure McLaren.

There were moments when it looked like Verstappen had the pace to steal it from under McLaren’s noses, but the RB20 was on a knife edge of balance with that skinny wing on a gusty evening.

“The wind, once you understand it, you know where you can use it and where you have to be a bit more cautious,” said Norris.

But on his final lap – seeing just how fast Verstappen had managed to go despite a huge final corner moment - Norris threw that caution to that wind.

It gave him pole by a couple of tenths of a second ahead of team-mate Oscar Piastri (who had quite a conservative run after his first Q3 lap was deleted and then reinstated for track limits).

“A bit harder work than I expected after practice,” Norris said. “But the car was great.”

If he hit the track at just the right moment, Verstappen’s crazy high-wire balancing act could wring a high-energy, superfast time from his car. But catch the wind wrong, and that balancing act could have it pointing at 40-degrees to the direction of travel and heading for the wall. This was at the final corner on his first Q3 lap. Max being Max, he not only caught the moment, opposite lock with his foot still nailed to the floor, engine on the rev limiter – but went onto provisional pole.

But with his final effort a few minutes later, the feeling in the car was even edgier. As he said over the radio: “The car is just super-sensitive… if I open the wheel slightly earlier or later it just snaps everywhere.”

There was something about the set-up Red Bull had arrived at after its usual Friday night rethink that was making the airflow link-up between the front and rear very tenuous. That relatively skinny rear wing seemed to be making that balance window unfeasibly narrow.

Verstappen could either have it like this or with understeer which he’d described on Friday as ‘ridiculous’. The aero-elasticity of the McLaren was probably a big part of how it had a much bigger sweet spot here.

Going out last, trying to catch the track at its quickest, Verstappen caught the wind instead. It didn’t almost put him into the wall this time, but gave him a super-nervous car. It seemed to lose more track time to the wind than any it gained from the surface.

The bigger-winged cars seemed less afflicted by the wind and better able to take advantage of the grip ramp-up. Because four cars – the two McLarens, Carlos Sainz’s Ferrari and Nico Hulkenberg’s starring Haas – beat his time.

Had Verstappen not had his moment, or had Carlos Sainz not had a wobble late in the lap, Piastri wouldn’t have made the front row. But Oscar had himself had a couple of scrappy moments on his final lap and had been cautious at Turn 1 where he’d ran wide last time.

Conditions had briefly disguised it a little, but the McLaren was the fastest car, this despite a less-than-ideal wing level – as Norris explained afterwards.

“We’re not necessarily running more downforce,” he said of the car’s lack of straightline performance. “It’s more about our DRS.

"We were on the lowest setting our wing can provide but the next step of wing down for us is too big. Others are more in an optimal range with their wings than we are, I think.”

It was the McLaren’s underbody downforce and great balance which was helping get it through the corners faster than Red Bull, Ferrari and Mercedes.

“We came here thinking the rear wing – which is a relatively new one we introduced in Brazil – was well-centred for Brazil and here,” said team boss Andrea Stella. “We think it’s the right wing for laptime.

"What Lando is referring to is we see a speed deficit in DRS and this is not something we’d have anticipated - and we are looking into it from different angles. Not that the DRS is the only design parameter because it can be that to get a bigger DRS you overall have a less efficient wing. But we need to understand it a bit better.”

But even with its less-than-optimum wing, the McLaren had 0.25s on Sainz’s Ferrari. Without Sainz’s wobble Ferrari’s deficit could have been maybe 0.15s, but no less than that.

Haas seemed to be in the perfect place for its wing efficiency, quick throughout practice and with Nico Hulkenberg going a remarkable fourth-fastest, just a few hundredths off the front row and half-a-tenth faster than Verstappen. A penalty for overtaking in the tunnel means Hulkenberg will only start seventh, though.

On the cusp of its first world constructors' championship for 26 years, McLaren is well-placed.

But there is obvious hazard in having Sainz right behind them, Carlos with absolutely nothing to lose in his final race for Ferrari.

The sort of opportunity denied Lewis Hamilton in his final Mercedes race who’d been the next quickest thing after the McLarens throughout practice, but who went out in Q1 after a bollard dislodged by Kevin Magnussen (who ironically was trying to get out of his way) got caught beneath the Mercedes.

George Russell, the team’s only representative in Q3, struggled somewhat and was only sixth with the Alpine of Pierre Gasly between him and his stewards' room nemesis Verstappen.

There are many great stories ready to play out from this grid structure.