What Max Verstappen's rival's post-qualifying comments reveal about his Nurburgring 24 approach

Rival drivers have praised the impact of Max Verstappen’s efforts at the Nurburgring 24 Hours, after the F1 champion qualified in the top four for this weekend’s race.

Verstappen took control of his team’s Mercedes AMG-GT3 in the second part of the three-phase Top Qualifying session on Friday, with his efforts ensuring a top 12 starting position.

In the final segment, Daniel Juncadella took the wheel, and positioned the car on the second row.

“I felt comfortable in the car because we were targeting to get to the top qualifying three, which of course is not easy with the competition out there," said Verstappen.

“It's super tough, a lot of fast cars around, but we just managed to sneak in. So the final lap was just good enough and it was nice.

“Luckily, it was dry, the car felt all right and we managed to sneak in. So that was the target and yeah, yesterday, a lot of changing conditions and for me the first time in the night.

“Probably the worst possible conditions with the rain, the fog coming in. But at least I got a good first idea of what to expect potentially in the race as well. So that was good.”

The #3 Verstappen car qualified 0.882s off the pace of the Red Bull Team Abt Lamborghini Huracan GT3, driven in TQ3 by Luca Engstler, who hailed Verstappen’s ‘serious’ approach to his debut in the 24-hour endurance race.

“He's definitely someone that I'm looking up to and someone that I can learn from a lot,” said Engstler.

“He's having a massive passion, like a lot of the drivers here, and I think that's why we can really identify ourselves with him.

“It just shows that he knows what we are doing here. I think he never expected to pitch up, rock up FP1 and then send it on pole. He knew that it's a very specific car, it's a very specific race that we're doing here.

“If you see the way he was preparing, it just showed that he's taking it seriously and that's just great to see.”

Marco Mapelli, who qualified second in the sister Red Bull Team Abt Lamborghini, added: “It's completely far away from his normal world, but it's nice to see his commitment on this job, his way to approach testing and so on. It means that he's having fun, but he knows that to perform he needs to commit a lot.

“It shows how the level is that you cannot just arrive and bang, make the car first or whatever. You need to be prepared.”