Max Verstappen labelled Friday at the Chinese Grand Prix as a “disaster pace-wise”, with the Red Bull driver suggesting that he does not yet know what the team will do to address the issues for the rest of the weekend after ending Sprint Qualifying in P8.
Having placed in eighth on the timesheets during the event’s sole practice session, Verstappen took the same position when it came to Qualifying for the Sprint later in the day, leaving the Dutchman to rue the problems that he experienced on his car.
“The whole day has been a disaster pace-wise,” said Verstappen. “[I had] no grip – honestly I think that’s the biggest problem – no balance, just losing massive amounts of time in the corners, to be honest.
“And then of course because of that, you start to trigger other little problems. The big problem for us is just the cornering – it’s completely out.”
Pushed on whether the squad would look to make changes for Saturday’s Qualifying ahead of Sunday’s Grand Prix, Verstappen responded: “We’ll have a look. I don’t know at the moment what we can do, but yeah, we’ll see.”
It was also a tricky day for Isack Hadjar on the other side of the Red Bull garage, the Frenchman ending SQ3 of Sprint Qualifying at the bottom of the top 10.
Quizzed on whether he had lost half a second on the straight during his effort, Hadjar explained: “I don’t know what happened yet and why we lost half a second.
“I was happy with my lap – it was good, but I don’t think that is going to change our weekend. I’m just happy to be not too far from Max.”
In terms of whether the team’s position came as a surprise – and if he had been anticipating that it would be better – the 21-year-old answered: “No, I was expecting the McLaren and the Ferrari to be ahead. I didn’t expect the gap overall to increase.”
