Max Verstappen correctly predicted that he wouldn’t win the 2023 Singapore Grand Prix, after qualifying in 11th on Saturday.
Verstappen endured a weekend to forget at the Marina Bay Circuit, where his record-breaking 10-race winning streak concluded, as did Red Bull’s 15-race winning streak.
Both Verstappen and Sergio Perez were eliminated in Q2 on Saturday, with Perez having qualified P13.
It marked the first time since the 2018 Russian Grand Prix that Red Bull didn’t have a car in Q3, something they won’t want to see happen again for several years.
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The RB19 just looked unsettled and unbalanced throughout the weekend, with Verstappen having said after qualifying that he hopes the race would be as “short” as possible.
“It’s going to be a long, hard race and I hope we won’t have too many Safety Car periods so the race will be short,” Verstappen said after qualifying, as reported by PlanetF1.com.
Verstappen only had the one Safety Car to deal with, which somewhat ruined his strategy of running deep into the race on the Hard compound.
Given how much Red Bull struggled for outright pace in Singapore, the reigning World Champion actually did well to recover to fifth.
He was agonisingly close to beating Charles Leclerc to fourth and arguably would’ve done if there was an extra lap.
The win was never on the cards though, with him having recognised that ahead of the race.
“Yeah, you can forget about that,” he admitted, when asked if he could win from P11. “You can’t pass. On other tracks, you can start last and win the race. But not here.”
Whilst the Dutchman didn’t win, he still managed to extend his championship lead to 151 points, as Perez could only recover to eighth.
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A third consecutive Drivers’ Championship is still pretty much guaranteed for the 25-year-old, although he will be hoping that Red Bull can return to their unstoppable form at the Japanese Grand Prix in a handful of days.
Should Red Bull’s sudden woes continue in Suzuka, then alarm bells might start ringing at Milton Keynes.
They won’t be caught in the championship, but it would suggest that 2024 will be very open.