F1 Miami GP: Max Verstappen explains ‘odd’ costly error and ‘difficult’ comment
The reigning world champion was in contention for pole but made a key error at Turn 5 and ran wide ❀on his final lap of qua🌊lifying, leaving him third on the grid and 0.195s down on his main title rival.
Verstappen swore on the radio as he realise🌜d he had thrown 🌠away his chance to retaliate and challenge Leclerc for pole.
- Leclerc beats Sainz to pole in Mi❀ami after Verstappen error
- F1 2022 Miami Grand Pr♌ix - Full Qualifying Results
- Verstappen's 'horrible' start to Miami GP explained
“A bit of a weird moment to lose the cಌar but again it’s just not really knowing the limits I guess and just trying a bit mor🌱e, and then it snapped 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, th🤡e way it snapped. But these 🍨things can happen.”
Unlucky Max!
— Formula 1 (@F1)
A costly error for the Dutchman in the final stages of qualifying 🐲
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 restrictin⛎g him to just five laps of running throughout Friday practice.
"O⭕verall 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 competitive 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 weꦅekends a little less difficult.
"We have a good๊ chance tomorrow. We have a bit of speed. The car is handling quite well. I'm looking forward to t💞hat.”
Asked to elabor🐟ate on his ‘difficult’ comment in the post-qualifying pr🥃ess conference, 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🔜 side. 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 still got close, but I think we could have done a much better job today if we had a cleaner ൲Fr🏅iday.”
Lewisღ regularly attends Grands Prix for mahbx.com around the world. Often reporting on the action from the ground, Lewis tells the stories of the people who matter in the sport.
