Autobayng News Team
Max Verstappen says the updates he is running on his Red Bull did not work as expected after failing to reach Q3 at Suzuka.
Last year’s Japanese Grand Prix pole-winner dropped out in Q2 when Arvid Lindblad of Red Bull’s sister team Racing Bulls beat his time, pushing down to 11th place.
Verstappen, who is running Red Bull’s new update package on his RB22, was 0.158 seconds slower than team mate Isack Hadjar. The four-times world champion opted to continue running the upgrades despite saying his car’s balance felt “horrendous” in final practice.
“We have a lot of problems that I cannot explain in detail here,” he told Canal Plus. “We know that sometimes it’s a little more predictable, sometimes it’s not, and unfortunately for me in qualifying the problems that we had yesterday came back, so it made the car extremely hard to drive. I was just sliding around and at the same time the car isn’t turning. So it’s very difficult.”
Red Bull brought changes to the sidepod, engine cover, floor and rear brake ducts to Suzuka. Verstappen said his impression of the updates was “not very good” so far.
“I have the updates, it’s creating some instability that we don’t want in the car. We opted to keep them on the car to see the differences, but I think we have a lot of work to do now to understand what is good and what is bad about it.”
Verstappen has been out-qualified by Hadjar twice in the three grands prix so far. In Australia, Verstappen was eliminated in Q1 after his car snapped into a spin when he brakes for the first corner. Prior to this season Verstappen had out-qualified his previous team mates – Yuki Tsunoda, Liam Lawson and Sergio Perez – for 30 consecutive rounds.
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Published by
Keith Collantine
Lifelong motor sport fan Keith set up RaceFans in 2005 – when it was originally called F1 Fanatic. Having previously worked as a motoring journalist, Keith began running the site full-time in 2010, achieving a long-held ambition to dedicate his full attention to his passion for motor racing. View all posts by Keith Collantine
