Red Bull’s Max Verstappen has admitted that he is unhappy with another reliability failure at 2022 Australian Grand Prix.
Having enjoyed a solid weekend which led to him qualifying second for the race, Verstappen endured a lonely race in second as he struggled to match the pace of race winner – Charles Leclerc whilst trying to manage his tyres after graining his mediums during his first stint.
A power unit issue however saw Verstappen pull over on Lap 39 and retire from the race in second place, with the reigning champion describing his second failure to finish in three races as “very disappointing” for his title defence with the cause of the issue still unclear.
“This is not what you need when you want to fight for the Championship, the gap is already pretty big.” continued Verstappen who now sits 46 points behind Leclerc and five points behind his teammate – Perez after the Mexican finished second to climb to fourth in the standings.
Verstappen added that Perez “did well to come second,” after enduring an initial poor start caused by Verstappen unintentionally blocking him into the first corner, which enabled Lewis Hamilton to improve to third on the start.
Looking ahead to future races, Verstappen admitted that “it doesn’t look like there is an easy fix so we need to work hard as a Team,” because there are various aspects of the car that needs extra development work in order to move forward and fight for the title.
Verstappen also sarcastically acknowledged the fact that he will need extra races to defend his title even though this could be the longest-ever F1 calendar if the cancelled Russian Grand Prix is replaced as he joked: “It is of course a long season and a lot can happen; I think at this stage we need 45 races!”
Perez meanwhile viewed his second-placed finish as a good result after having to battle his way past Hamilton, Fernando Alonso and George Russell during the race, as he described second place as “a good result” to build on.
Explaining how “complicated” his race was after the start, Perez said: “My first start was very poor, we struggled a lot with degradation on the medium tyre, we were a bit unlucky with the safety car and we lost two positions which we recovered later.”
Perez though wasn’t happy to be battling more with Mercedes than Ferrari as he insisted that “the pace wasn’t where we want it to be,” as he vowed to analyse where he went wrong at various points across the weekend and fight back in Imola next time out.
Leave a Reply