Max Verstappen has detailed how a \u201cdouble whammy\u201d of issues hampered his Qualifying efforts at the British Grand Prix, with the Dutchman admitting that the problems made for an \u201cextra painful\u201d session en route to P7.<\/p>\n
After battling hard in the Sprint before falling back to P6, Verstappen<\/a> and Red Bull<\/a> initially looked to have made a decent start in Qualifying, the four-time World Champion ending Q1 in third place while team mate Isack Hadjar<\/a> had gone fastest.<\/p>\n Some issues appeared to kick in as the session progressed, however, with Verstappen reporting that the engine was \u201cnot responding as normal\u201d in Q2, before he wound up in seventh \u2013 behind Hadjar in fifth \u2013 when Q3 reached its conclusion.<\/p>\n Reflecting back on Qualifying after stepping out of the car, Verstappen explained: \u201c[There were] two things. The whole session, like of course not a good balance, but at the same time terribly slow on the straight for whatever reason, even compared to the other car.<\/p>\n \u201cWe couldn\u2019t fix it from the first run until the end. I mean, when you\u2019re slow on the straight here, you\u2019re more full-throttle, you burn more battery\u2026 so it\u2019s just like a spiral and it gets worse and worse throughout to the end of the lap. It\u2019s like a double whammy, so it\u2019s extra painful.\u201d<\/p>\n Asked if battling the McLarens<\/a> looked like being the best-case scenario in Sunday\u2019s race \u2013 and if Mercedes<\/a> and Ferrari<\/a> were out of reach \u2013 the 28-year-old answered: \u201cWe first have to fix our own problems.<\/p>\n \u201cWhen you\u2019re already just lacking top speed, that\u2019s a major problem around here so that\u2019s something that we need to understand also for tomorrow.\u201d<\/p>\n On the other side of the garage, Hadjar appeared more content with how the RB22 felt \u2013 but admitted that it was difficult to be so off the pace of the team\u2019s rivals.<\/p>\n \u201cI think yesterday I was fairly happy with the car \u2013 I just made a step I think, day two, made a step driving-wise, and very little mistakes,\u201d the Frenchman said.<\/p>\n \u201cSo I think that was good, but still it hits hard when you\u2019re six tenths behind pole after a very good lap. And the thing is, I feel like the car is pretty good, so it\u2019s hard to, at the moment, see how we can do to fight ahead.\u201d<\/p>\n Hadjar conceded that the Mercedes and Ferrari cars appeared too far away in Red Bull\u2019s fight, adding: \u201cI think you saw today\u2019s Sprint race was kind of clear, the rankings in terms of race pace \u2013 like Mercedes, Ferrari and then McLaren, and then us.<\/p>\n \u201cAnd I think if we can bring the fight to McLaren, that\u2019s already a very good job.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Max Verstappen has detailed how a \u201cdouble whammy\u201d of issues hampered his Qualifying efforts at the British Grand…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":779973,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[572],"tags":[64,63,806,805,803,804,85],"class_list":["post-779972","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-motosport","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-motor","tag-motor-sports","tag-motosport","tag-motosports","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/779972","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=779972"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/779972\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/779973"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=779972"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=779972"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=779972"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}