Red Bull’s Max Verstappen has admitted that he found a red flag at end of Q3 for Monaco Grand Prix ‘frustrating’ as he missed out on pole position.
Verstappen had earlier messed up his first flier during his final Q3 run with a mistake at Portier but had just set the fastest first sector when Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc crashed at the Swimming Pool chicane to cause a red flag and ruin the Dutchman’s shot at denying him pole.
Explaining how he felt when the red flag came out, Verstappen said; “My last lap felt really good as I was going into the tunnel, but because of the red flag I couldn’t finish it which was frustrating as I felt so comfortable in the car and I knew pole position was on.”
Verstappen however praised Leclerc for ‘driving very well’ this weekend in a tight battle for pole as the top five drivers were split by just 0.274 seconds, whilst acknowledging his own team for their progress in achieving a strong turnaround from Thursday Practice to today.
The 23 year-old however took consolation in second which he believes to be ‘the most important thing’ around this track as he looks to take the championship lead with a win tomorrow, whilst title rival – Lewis Hamilton starts seventh after a difficult qualifying.
Verstappen’s teammate, Sergio Perez however endured a difficult Q3 to find himself ninth on the starting grid following a ‘really messy’ Q3 where his performance went ‘backwards’ with no progress on what they had hoped for after finishing fifth in FP3.
Explaining what went wrong in qualifying, Perez said; “I was struggling a lot with the dropping temperatures so we changed our approach going into the final session and it just made it worse, and then on my final Q3 run I got traffic in the last sector so I lost the lap.”
Red Bull Team Principal echoed the thoughts of both Verstappen and Perez in how ‘frustrating’ it was to see qualifying get away from them, although he has taken pleasure in seeing Hamilton qualify seventh which he believes will be ‘hugely important’ for Verstappen’s title challenge so is focused on the positives.
Horner also noted that Perez “was just missing that last bit of confidence and was badly compromised in Q3, with three cars ahead of him at Rascasse costing him quite a bit of time.”
With Verstappen currently 14 points behind Hamilton in the drivers’ standings and Red Bull sat 29 points behind Mercedes in the constructor fight, Horner concluded by admitting that this is their most ‘real opportunity’ to put a dent in the Silver Arrows’ title defences which they must ‘make the most of that.’
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