F1 Miami GP: Max Verstappen explains ‘odd’ costly error and ‘difficult’ comment
The reigning world champion was in contention for pol♒e but made a key error at Turn 5 and ran wide on his final lap of qualifying, leaving him third on t💝he grid and 0.195s down on his main title rival.
Verstappen swore on the radio a💞s he realised he had thrown away his chance to retaliate and challenge Leclerc for pole.
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“A bit of a weird moment to lose the car but again it’s just not really knowing the limits I guess and just trying a bit more, and then it snapp𝓰ed suddenly in Turn 5,” he explained.
“I tried🔯 to keep it on the road but it didn’t really work, so I aborted. I tried to stay out of the way of the cars behind me, but a bit odd, the way it snapped. But these things can happen.”
Unlucky Max!
— Formula 1 (@F1)
A costly error for the Dutchmanꦑ in the final stages of qualif💮ying
Red Bull's disrupted start hurts Verstappen
The Dutchman insisted he was surprised to even be on the second row after a disrupted start to the weekend, with reliability issues for Red Bull restricting him to just fi🌺ve laps of running throughout Friday practice.
"Overall I am pretty pleased with qualifying,” he said directly after qualifying in parc ferme. “Literally I did four or five laps 🥀yesterday so today I was still trying to learn the track and trying to find a decent balance in the car. To be that com𓄧petitive in qualifying, I was a bit surprised.
"This is not an easy track🎉 to 🃏learn. Of course you want to be on pole, but where we came from I think we did a really good job. We have to start making the weekends a little less difficult.
"We have a good chance tomorrow. We have a bit of speed. The car is handlingꦑ quite well. I'm looking fo🍸rward to that.”
Asked to elaborate on his ‘diffꦕicult’ comment in the post-qualifying press confe🥃rence, Verstappen said: “Like I said before, I’ve only done four or five laps yesterday and you cannot afford that on a new track like this and a street circuit in general, because it’s very critical to just do laps and get in a rhythm.
“On a normal track it is quite easy to get into a rhythm. On a street circuit it’s a lot more difficult and we basically failed on that siꦑde. Of course, in general, we are experienced enough to catch up on a lot of it, but to really fight, especially against a strong team like that, you cannot afford it.
“We st🐈ill got close, but I think 🏅we could have done a much better job today if we had a cleaner Friday.”
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