Max Verstappen had some choice words following his Japanese Grand Prix qualifying session. The 28-year-old is set to start Sunday’s race in 11th after being knocked out in Q2.
In the immediate aftermath of his elimination, he said to race engineer Gianpiero Lambiase over the team radio: “I think there’s something wrong with the car, mate. It’s completely undriveable suddenly in this qualifying. Jumping on high speed in the rear, suddenly.”
The former world champion continued to make his displeasure clear when speaking to Sky Sports. He said: “The car never turns mid-corner. And also again, there’s just so much oversteer on entry, it’s really difficult and unpredictable.
“We thought we had fixed it a little bit in FP3 – there was still a lot of understeer in the car – but in qualifying it was again, for me, undriveable. So that’s something we need to look at. I’m also driving a bit of a different aero package this weekend, but it seems like that’s not working, so that’s also not very good.
“Jumping in the corners. We have problems that I cannot explain in detail here, that we know are there. Sometimes they are a bit worse than other times, and in this qualifying it just came back to a point where it was undriveable.”