YAS MARINA, Abu Dhabi -- Max Verstappen has promised to go "all out" in pursuit of his fifth world title after securing pole position at Sunday's championship decider in Abu Dhabi.
The reigning champion is 12 points behind championship leader Lando Norris, who will start the race from second on the grid ahead of McLaren teammate and outsider for the title, Oscar Piastri.
Norris can secure his first world title by finishing on the podium, while Verstappen's best route to championship glory is to win the race and hope Norris slips to fourth or lower.
Asked if he was willing to take maximum risk to ensure victory and boost his chances of a fifth title, Verstappen said he would go "all out" on Sunday.
"I have nothing to lose," he added. "For me, of course, I'm going to try to win the race. I'm going to defend [the lead] and if I need to attack, I'll attack.
"Because what can happen? You have a second [place finish in the championship] or third or you win."
One option open to Verstappen if he is leading the McLarens after the first lap is to deliberately back them into the chasing pack to try to make Norris lose positions.
It's a tactic Lewis Hamilton employed on teammate Nico Rosberg while leading the 2016 title decider in Abu Dhabi, although in that instance Rosberg held on to second place and secured the title.
However, Verstappen said changes made to the circuit, cars and tires since 2016 meant there is less chance of successfully backing up the pack.
"It was a different [track] layout," he said. "I feel like now you get towed around a lot more around the lap. So it's probably not as easy to do something like that.
"The car is also of course completely different to back then. I felt like it was a lot easier back then to back it up because the tires would overheat a lot when you would get close [to the car in front].
"I remember even in 2016 in some qualifying laps you couldn't go flat out in sector one to keep the tires alive later in the lap, which actually was the case here, for example.
"It's very different, very different times. I hope it's not straightforward, the race, but hopefully that's not because of me."
Verstappen secured pole position by 0.201 seconds ahead of Norris in a qualifying session where margins were typically less than a tenth of a second.
The Red Bull driver saved two sets of fresh soft tires for Q3 and said the track conditions also came towards him for his final two flying laps.
"Well in Q2, I stayed on scrubbed tires [to save a set of fresh tyres for Q3], and I think those laps already felt quite decent," he said. "Because then in Q3, track temp is coming down, you can push a bit more, and that's exactly what we did.
"We found a bit more lap time, and of course incredibly happy to be in first. That's the only thing we can do, that's the only thing we can control, is maximise everything we have and what we can with the car. We did that in qualifying."
