Max Verstappen has ruled out winning the Singapore Grand Prix so much that he is not even looking forward to engaging in battles with his rivals. The two-time world champion was knocked out by Liam Lawson of AlphaTauri, leaving Verstappen languishing in 11th place, which was said to be his worst qualifying showing.
By declaring his car to be “undriveable” and a “really bad car”, Verstappen was not looking forward to Sunday’s race, even though he’s recovered from a worse grid slot this season.
Christian Horner addresses Red Bull’s uncharacteristic performance
Christian Horner, the team boss, tried to be optimistic about his team’s underperformance this weekend, admitting that the RB19 had not been a compliant machine in Singapore.
“Yeah, it’s very, very confusing to have dropped the amount of pace that we have,” he said.
“The car is just not responding to changes, you can hear this understeer, oversteer, braking issues – it’s like we haven’t managed to get the tyre into the right working window.
“Usually when you see a gap that big is because the tire just isn’t fundamentally working now. We’ve tried different things with setup, we’ve tried different preparations, and it’s just not happening.
“So a lot for us to understand tonight to try and turn around and it’s obviously very, very tough for us to make good progress from those grid positions tomorrow, but we’ll certainly be trying very hard.”
FIA introduced a new technical directive, TD018, which is aimed at addressing the flexibility of aerodynamic components, however, the setup was reversed and reset back to where it was according to Horner.
“The car we have here for qualifying is essentially the identical car that we had two weeks ago in Monza and a week before that at Zandvoort,” he said.
Verstappen expresses frustration over Red Bull’s qualifying setup woes
During the Grand Prix Final Practice, world champion Max Verstappen found himself struggling more than the rest of the drivers. The Red Bull driver was left angered by the problematic upshifts in his RB19, describing them as “unacceptable” after being noticeably off the pace in FP3.
The evident frustrations were voiced over a series of animated radio exchanges with his race engineer, Gianpiero Lambiase.
“I am sorry but I cannot drive with these upshifts. What the **** is this? Unacceptable!”
Furthermore, Lambiase suggested Verstappen pit to “test something with the upshifts.”
Max just ruins the roll-in sequence after Q2 🤣 #F1#SingaporeGP #redbull#MaxVerstappen #sergioperez pic.twitter.com/kL4Y0uWhb6
— Ref Jeff (@realrefjeff) September 16, 2023
An evidently frustrated Verstappen responded after he’d tested such changes.
“Yeah a little bit smoother, but yeah, miles off still… It’s just giving me wheelspin. It’s not only upshifts, also downshifts.”
“I’m just struggling for rear grip,” he radio’d through. “You see that last sector? I’m just drifting. “I think if I’m going to compete in drifting if I might win the race.”
Do you think the upshifts mainly made Max struggle throughout the entire race? Please let us know in the comment section below!
