Verstappen has not won since the Emilia-Romagna Grand Prix in May.
One might have expected the four-time champion to be pessimistic of turning this into a win, as the McLaren has generally had a much bigger advantage in races this year than in qualifying, because it is so good on its tyres.
But Verstappen was relatively optimistic after qualfiying.
“I don’t sit here and think it is going to be easy to be in front of McLaren,” he said. “The whole season has shown that.
“This season we have had a few good qualifyings but in the race we always seem to struggle a little bit compared to them.
“I am going to give it a good go. Friday, my long run was nice. I’m not sure it is going to be enough but if we can do something similar and they don’t improve too much then I have a feeling that maybe we have a chance.
“To stay here will be tough but we will see what we can do.”
McLaren team principal Andrea Stella explained the technical reasons why Verstappen might be more competitive over a race distance this weekend than previously.
Stella explained that the McLaren was the fastest car in the corners but was losing time on the straights in qualifying.
“In racing, the corners become quite a bit longer, because you brake earlier, you go later on throttle, so the grip-limited area extends, and this would make our car just naturally more competitive,” he said.
“However, from what we have seen in terms of lap times in practice, if we take the lap times that Verstappen was able to do, they were very comparable to ours. I think he has done a whole long run in 1.23s, which is very fast, very competitive.
“We have seen good lap times for Ferrari, good lap times for Mercedes.
“The Tarmac is very high grip after the resurface last year. I think there won’t be necessarily much degradation, and it won’t be the natural characteristic of McLaren being very good when the grip is low.
“I think the field will be much more compact, not only in qualifying like we have seen today, but also in the race.”
