New Formula 1 car was “super-frustrating” to drive in first race – Verstappen

Max Verstappen’s first experience of racing Formula 1’s new cars has not improved his view of them.

The Red Bull driver has been the fiercest critic of the new regulations introduced this year, saying the new cars are “not Formula 1”.

He qualified 20th for the first race of the season after suffering an unexpected problem under braking for turn one on his first qualifying lap. He recovered to finish sixth behind Lando Norris, but despite praising his team’s efforts at the end of the race, he made it clear he had not enjoyed driving.

“Thank you guys, you guys all worked very hard for this,” he told his team on the radio. “You’ve done a really good job. It’s super-frustrating to drive, but thank you.”

Verstappen’s race engineer Gianpiero Lambiase responded to Verstappen’s complaint, saying: “Frustrating? There’s drivers up front, Max, elated with this whole thing.”

Despite making up a dozen places from his grid position – Oscar Piastri and Nico Hulkenberg failed to start – Verstappen said afterwards it had “not really” been an enjoyable race.

“Of course the overtakes were fun but I’m also racing cars that are two seconds slower so for me it’s just clearing the traffic,” he told Sky. “It sounds maybe weird but it’s just how I see it – it’s not really a fair fight.”

Verstappen started the race on the hard tyre compound in a bid to gain ground while most others chose mediums. However he couldn’t make the tyres last as long as he hoped to and, like Norris, had to make a second pit stop.

“I just tried to go through as clean as possible and try to get into my rhythm at one point when I cleared the midfield. But we had too much deg[radation]. We were just really graining a lot on the tyres and that then compromised a lot of the rest of the race. We thought with the hard compound that it would be better today for us, but unfortunately that compound somehow didn’t work today.”

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