Max Verstappen will start the Brazilian Grand Prix from the pit lane as Red Bull make further changes to his car in a bid to cure their handling problems.
It will also allow the team to fit a fresh power unit to his RB21.
Verstappen’s run of reaching Q3 in every session this year came to a surprising end on Saturday when he failed to progress beyond Q1 at Interlagos. He qualified sixth for the sprint race 24 hours earlier but was unhappy with his car’s handling, saying it felt like a “pogo stick”.
Red Bull made drastic changes to his car’s set-up between the sprint race and qualifying for the grand prix. However Verstappen was dismayed to discover its balance had worsened and he missed the cut for Q2 by six hundredths of a second.
“The car right now is a tiny bit better, but now I’m sliding even more,” Verstappen told his race engineer Gianpiero Lambiase during qualifying.
The decision to change his set-up again means Verstappen has to start the race from the pit lane. It is the eighth time this year Red Bull have done this with one of their cars, but the first time Verstappen has done so.
Red Bull team principal Laurent Mekies said yesterday the team were “missing the right window for the car for this circuit, in these conditions.”
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“We were not happy with where we were after the sprint [race], so we decided to make a number of changes. It is part of the risk-taking we felt was necessary to see if we could get more out of the car.
“It didn’t work and if anything, it went in the opposite direction and clearly, we lost a lot of competitiveness. It is painful and difficult to accept but it is what happens when you take risks sometimes and the best we can do is to learn from it and see where we can improve the car from here.”
Verstappen won last year’s rain-affected grand prix after starting 17th. He qualified 12th on the grid and was relegated five places by a penalty.
Tsunoda started Saturday’s 24-lap sprint race from the pits and rose to finish 13th.
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