Autobayng News Team
Max Verstappen expects a difficult sprint race in Losail after taking sixth place on the grid with what he said was an ill-handling car.
The Red Bull driver said his car’s balance was “not good from the first lap” of qualifying for the sprint race.
“Just really bad bouncing and very aggressive understeer that would shift into oversteer in high speed [corners]. So just not what you want to go fast.
“Then you’re locked in and we tried to, of course, change a few things on the wheel but it never really worked. So that made it made it quite tricky.”
Verstappen said the team changed “a few things” after practice, where he was also sixth fastest, “but it clearly wasn’t wasn’t working well in qualifying so that’s something that we need to understand.”
Having been out-qualified by both championship contenders as well as his team mate, Verstappen suspects the 19-lap race will offer him few opportunities.
“With this balance tomorrow in the sprint at least it will not be a lot of fun,” he said. “So it will be more about just trying to survive, I guess, and then make some changes going into qualifying.”
Verstappen’s messages about his car in qualifying
Verstappen told the team his car was “bouncing like crazy, it’s just shit” early in SQ2. “I have no front at the same time,” he added, “but I also need the car to turn better mid corner.”
The team diagnosed excessive rotation at the rear of the car and gave him a settings change but it appeared to make little difference. “Can you please check the car?” Verstappen asked, “it’s bouncing like crazy, it’s undrivable.”
He went wide at turn four during his first run in SQ3 and reported “between two and four it just started to understeer a lot, for whatever reason.” After taking the chequered flag Verstappen summed up: “It’s really not good.”
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