Verstappen struggles to "understand why the performance has been quite so bad"
On the back of a difficult day at Sao Paulo, reigning champion Max Verstappen admitted that he struggles to "understand why the performance has been quite so bad."
Max Verstappen had a great initial start in the Sao Paulo F1 Sprint to pick off Aston Martin’s Fernando Alonso and run fifth. Following the restart, he had to defend his position from the Spaniard, but managed to stay ahead.
However, the reigning champion was unable to close in on Mercedes driver George Russell, and had to content with a fourth place.
The Grand Prix qualifying saw Verstappen struggle for grip, and although he had time to complete two flying laps on a fresh set of softs in the dying moments of Q1, he did not manage to make it out of Q1.
His team-mate Yuki Tsunoda started the Sprint from the pit lane as Red Bull opted to test out a different downforce set-up. The Japanese driver was unable to gain any points in the 100km dash, and he ended up only 19th fastest in the main qualifying session.
Commenting on his sprint day at Sao Paulo, Verstappen added: "The Sprint today was a mixed bag, I had a good start and made up one position but that was about as good as it got.
"We then had the red flag and my race was pretty much over, I just couldn't keep up with the cars in front of me and the wet patches on the track didn't help.
"The Sprint felt similar to how the car felt during Sprint Quali yesterday so considering that, we definitely maximised as much as was possible with the P4 result.
Having struggled for grip in the Grand Prix qualifying, the Dutchman added: "Between the Sprint and Quali today we made quite a few changes to the car to try and improve performance, but the grip and traction were not there and I was sliding around a lot which resulted in me really having to under drive.
"I am struggling to understand why the performance has been quite so bad today, we have a lot to analyse but firstly we need to understand the issues that we have been facing all weekend.
"The whole weekend has been pretty tough which is definitely unexpected but let's see what tomorrow has in store," the Dutchman concluded.
