Red Bull sinks
His mood worsens day by day Max Verstappenwho is not only struggling with an F1 that he doesn’t like at all but also with a single-seater – the RB22 – which doesn’t seem capable of allowing him to be as competitive as he would like. Today’s Sprint qualifying in Shanghai was a step back in terms of performance compared to Australia, where the Dutchman had nevertheless made a good comeback, climbing from 20th to sixth during the GP. This time, however, Verstappen did not go beyond the eighth fastest time, suffering a huge delay from George Russell’s Mercedes (+1,734) and also finding himself behind Pierre Gasly’s Alpine.
Via radio, at the end of SQ3, Verstappen vented his feelings, somewhere between angry and resigned, complaining about the difficulties driving his car: “I can’t. This [macchina] it’s undrivable. We’ve never had anything this bad“, declared the four-time world champion speaking with his race engineer Giampiero Lambiase. Shortly afterwards, the team principal of the Milton Keynes team also intervened via radio, Laurent Mekieswho apologized to Verstappen for the problems his car presented. “Sorry Max. It was tough. There is a lot to learn. The weekend is still long, we need to learn from it. We’ll try again” However, no reply came from Verstappen.
