Four-time F1 champion Max Verstappen had a disastrous Chinese GP Sprint race after a subpar qualifying session. A seemingly angry Dutchman took to the media pen after the race and detailed his feelings as he reflected on the sprint.
Max Verstappen’s miserable weekend at the Shanghai International Circuit continued during the sprint race. The Dutchman started the race in P8 after issues in the qualifying and dropped multiple positions off the start after a poor getaway.
The Red Bull was down in P14 after the start as he lost six positions, and started making positions up one at a time. The Dutchman had just gotten on the brink of the Top 10 when a safety car came out due to Nico Hulkenberg stopping on the track.
Red Bull decided to pit both its drivers while the majority of the midfield stayed out, resulting in Max Verstappen losing track position and coming out in P14. With the race restarting with just three laps left, the Dutchman had a task up his sleeve to make up at least six positions to finish in the points.
Alas, Verstappen only managed to finish P9, with Liam Lawson and Oliver Bearman’s (P7 & P8 respectively) gamble of not pitting under safety car paying off. After the race, the Dutchman took to the media pen and detailed his frustration.
“I don’t have a lot of words, to be honest. Everything that could go wrong went wrong. The start is one problem we have to fix, but then after that the balance is all over the place, we probably have the highest degradation of everyone, plus some other bits on the car that were not… well prepared. We need to get our stuff together,” said Max Verstappen
The Dutchman has been complaining about the RB22 since the practice at the Chinese GP, and the same problems followed Verstappen in the Sprint race.
Max Verstappen claimed that Red Bull RB22 was “undriveable” after the Chinese GP Sprint shootout
Max Verstappen started the sprint qualifying, SQ1, complaining about the shifts on the RB22, followed up by a radio suggesting that the drivability of the car was bad. SQ2 was a similar story with similar complaints, as both the Red Bull drivers just barely crept into SQ3.
After a disappointing SQ3, where Verstappen could only manage P8, the Dutchman took to the team radio and claimed that the car was undriveable as he said,
“I can’t. This is undriveable. We never had anything this bad.”
Laurent Mekies took to the radio and apologized to the four-time F1 champion, which was followed up by radio silence from Verstappen’s end. During the post-sprint qualifying interview, Red Bull star said,
“The whole day has been a disaster pace wise. No grip. No balance. Losing massive amount of times in the corners, and then because of that you trigger other little problems. The big problem for us is the cornering.”
Going into the qualifying for the Main Race at the Chinese GP, Verstappen suggested that teams would be making changes to the car.
Edited by Pranay Bhagi
