Max Verstappen admitted after his shock Q2 elimination at the Singapore Grand Prix that he knew fighting for pole would be “tough”; however, he didn’t expect qualifying to go as badly as it did.
The reigning World Champion slammed his RB19 as “undriveable”, leaving him to start Sunday’s race from a provisional P11.
It’s only provisional as the Dutchman is under investigation for three separate incidents of impeding, which in theory could result in a nine-place grid penalty if found guilty on all three occasions.
Verstappen had come close to scrapping through to Q3, only for AlphaTauri stand-in Liam Lawson to kick him out of qualifying in emphatic fashion.
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The Red Bull driver was livid after noticing that he’d been eliminated and labelled the session as a “shocking experience”.
“I don’t know if you saw that, but that was ****. Shocking, absolutely shocking experience,” Verstappen complained over the team radio.
It wasn’t any better of a session for Sergio Perez, who will start from P13 provisionally after the Mexican was also eliminated in Q2.
The usually superior side have struggled throughout the weekend in Singapore, with Verstappen having been furious during Free Practice 3 after experiencing an upshifting issue yet again.
“These upshifts, what the f***? I’m sorry but I cannot drive with these upshifts. What f***ing is this? Unacceptable,” Verstappen said over the radio in FP3.
If Verstappen wants to extend his record-breaking winning streak to 11 races on Sunday, then he’ll require possibly his greatest ever comeback, something which cannot be ruled out no matter where he starts from.
Verstappen discussed the car’s issues after qualifying and admitting that he had “no traction”, something which made the RB19 “really difficult to drive”.
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“I knew it would always be tough to put it on pole. But this I didn’t expect,” Verstappen admitted after qualifying, as reported by The Telegraph.
“Throughout the weekend we have been struggling. FP3 was actually not too bad but then we tried a few more things on the car for qualifying and that tipped it over where it became undrivable again.
“The car was massively bottoming out in the big braking zones, all the time if I wanted to brake late and hard, my front wheels were getting unloaded. It’s just a shocking experience and then trying to lean on the car in the slow-speed, I was constantly sliding and no traction, just really difficult to drive.”