He’s dominated here for the last two years like that. This time he emerged from the murk on the intermediates to be fastest by a margin of over 0.6s from an over-achieving Charles Leclerc.

It was an advantage which magnified itself by allowing him to get through Q1 and Q2 using only a single set of inters in each session, leaving him uniquely with two new sets in Q3 and thereby giving him the perfect combination of new tyre and track grip, a combination out of reach to everyone else.

But he at least does not think this is a portent of history repeating on race day from his 11^th place grid slot.

“I’m not as confident as I was in the last three years around here in coming to the front. I still see it more as a damage limitation race.”

Others – in particular McLaren’s Lando Norris who has qualified only fifth fastest ahead of team-mate Oscar Piastri but behind Leclerc, Sergio Perez’s Red Bull and Lewis Hamilton’s Mercedes – don’t see it like that.

“The whole weekend Red Bull have been better than us here,” Norris said. “I just don’t think they showed their cards yesterday and we did. That’s pretty much all we’ve got.”

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There’s a very good reason the McLarens qualified only fifth and sixth in the wet. They ran significantly less downforce than the others, especially Red Bull. But race day is forecast to be dry. So McLaren ran the smaller wing it’s had all weekend and just continued with the greater angle it ran in FP2, just enough to keep it in its efficiency range.

That being the case, there’s a logic to both the Verstappen and Norris interpretations of who really has the advantage.

“Looking at McLaren’s pace on the [dry] long run yesterday it looks incredibly strong,” says Verstappen. “They looked very comfortable out there. But even though they are starting a little far back they will quite comfortably challenge for the front… I’d be very happy if we could just match that race pace – and starting further back and on different tyres, it’s definitely just a damage limitation race for me.”

Verstappen ran the very big wing he’d used in Friday FP1. But even the trimmed one he’d subsequently tried in FP2 with the cutaways on the outboard was still carrying more downforce than anyone else. For today (and the rest of the weekend) he was back on the original even bigger one.

So he was 0.8s faster than Norris through the turns of sector 2. He was over 0.4s quicker through there even than the next-fastest, Leclerc in a Ferrari which was carrying more downforce than the McLaren but a lot less than the Red Bull. Yet Verstappen was still slightly quicker than Norris in the straights of sectors 1 and 3.