Max Verstappen: Qualifying in Baku turned into a disaster

Red Bull Racing's four-time world champion Max Verstappen, who posted the eighth-fastest time in Friday's qualifying for the Formula 1 Azerbaijan Grand Prix, said he lacked top speed over a lap.

According to Report, citing f1News, Verstappen said he was losing around half a second per lap to his teammate Isack Hadjar because of the lack of top speed.

"That was the first problem. The second came in the final part of qualifying (Q3 – ed.), when the battery failed to charge halfway through the lap before my flying lap. As a result, I started the attempt with a half-empty battery and had to abort the lap, which caused the tires to cool down. All of that compounded the situation and affected the final attempt. (…) All these factors led to this result," he said.

The Red Bull driver stressed that he did not know why he had encountered those problems.

"I don"t even know why it happened, because we had been fast all weekend. But qualifying turned into a disaster because of all these issues. We"ll see what we can do in the race on September 26," Verstappen said.