"Every corner was a bit of a struggle" claims Verstappen as he explains his result on Red Bull's home soil

Explaining his disappointing seventh-place finish in qualifying, Red Bull driver Max Verstappen said that "every corner was a bit of a struggle" for him in the grid-deciding session at the Red Bull Ring.

Although Max Verstappen wasn’t quite able to take the top spot across practice, he looked fairly competitive in the third and final practice on Satuday.

However, the Dutchman was unable to challenge for top places in qualifying, complaining about the overall balance of his RB21. In Q3, the reigning champion appeared to be in contention for P5 on the grid, but he was forced to abort his final flying lap due to yellow flags brought out for a spin by Pierre Gasly.

Explaining his disappointing seventh-place finish in qualifying, the Dutchman said: “Everything fell apart a bit. Every corner was a bit of a struggle to be honest. No balance, no front, no rear in different places of the corner, so that made it very difficult to get in a rhythm and a bit of a benchmark.

“Even with the final lap, of course I had a yellow so I had to abort. It was still not even close to pole so that was quite a painful Qualifying for us.”

Pressed on whether he expects a better performance from his car, the Dutchman added: "Yeah but tomorrow’s probably going to be even warmer than today. It seems like as soon as it got warmer, it made our struggles even worse.

"That doesn’t look great, but we’ll see tomorrow. Maybe [there will be] some surprises in the race. So far this weekend it has not been the easiest, FP3 earlier today was more positive than qualifying but we were still off the pace and the hotter weather conditions didn’t help.

Explaining his struggles in qualifying, Verstappen continued: "Our balance was off and there isn’t much that you can do about it once you feel it out on track, that was similar to the situation with our grip, it was difficult to know whether to push the car or not.

"Pierre spun out which caused a yellow flag and that certainly didn’t help us as I had to abort the lap. Even if I had completed it, it still would have only put me around P3 or P4 which would still have been five or six tenths off pole.

"I don’t think that it will be easy out there tomorrow but we will analyse everything post quali to give us the best chance in the race tomorrow," Verstappen added.