Verstappen: Rear wing cracks not behind “terrible” F1 qualifying

The F1 championship leader had dominated the weekend until qualifying but could only take third on the grid as Mercedes upstaged Red Bull with a remarkable turnaround in Q3 to lock out the front row. 

Red Bull mechanics were seen working to reinforce the rear wings on both cars in the build up to qualifying but Verstappen does not think the changes made by his team led to his failure to claim pole position. 

“They were cracked after FP3, so we had to patch them up and basically they were like new to start qualifying,” he explained. 

“So I don’t think that had anything to do with it. But of course we’ll have a look into it again.” 

Verstappen ended up 0.350s adrift of Valtteri Bottas on a messy first run in Q3, before his final lap was compromised by AlphaTauri driver Yuki Tsunoda running off-track ahead of him. 

While the Dutchman stressed the incident cost him time, he felt the biggest reason for his lack of pace was because he was struggling for grip. 

When asked if he was surprised by Mercedes’ pace, Verstappen replied: “No, we just had a terrible qualifying. So nothing surprising.

“I just think we were really slow and had terrible grip in Q3,” he added. “I think my last lap, we recovered it a little bit by getting the tyres into a little bit of a better window, but we were still not what we would have liked and how the car was behaving in all the practice sessions. 

“So that was a bit of a mystery. But then tomorrow we maybe race on different tyres anyway so I expect the balance to be good again.” 

Verstappen said Red Bull will analyse why he suffered a sudden drop off in grip as qualifying progressed. 

“At the start of Q1 it was good, even in Q2 it was alright,” he added. “We have to check the outlaps and stuff. 

“Between the first and second runs of Q3 there was a bit of a difference also. So a few things to analyse but overall not great.”