Max Verstappen said switching to a higher downforce rear wing before qualifying did not produce the change in balance he expected.

The Red Bull driver won Saturday’s sprint race using a slim rear wing on his RB21. But with rain forecast for Sunday, Verstappen switched to a more conventional rear wing for qualifying, which will generate more downforce and should aid him in wet conditions.

However Verstappen said his car didn’t respond to the change the way he expected. He looked on course to qualify at least third until he made a mistake in his final qualifying run and dropped behind Charles Leclerc.

“We opted [to change] a little bit, of course, looking ahead for tomorrow,” Verstappen told the official Formula 1 channel. “But somehow also the balance didn’t really improve with that change and that’s a bit weird.

“Especially in Q3, the first set [of tyres] felt awful and then the second set we tried something else and it just didn’t give me any grip starting the lap. I already had a lot of wheelspin starting the last lap out of the last corner and exactly the same happened out of turn one and I just lost two tenths on my own lap time already, which is of course not ideal.

“From there onwards we tried to catch up a bit of lap time. Of course without that problem in turn one you then look quite okay, quite close to the McLarens, but of course overall it’s not been a very good qualifying.”

Verstappen expects it will be “tough” to beat the McLaren drivers, who have locked out the front row of the grid, even if rain does arrive on Sunday. “First of all, if it’s wet, you can’t see anything so you can’t really do anything in lap one,” he said.

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“I hope that we can fight back to a podium, but normally in the wet conditions, McLaren is also very fast. They have that really under control now as well with how the inter[mediate tyres] are operating.

“So I’m not making any kind of illusion, we just need to be realistic and we just need to work on our balance first of all.”

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