Verstappen: "Technical issues cost me P3"

Red Bull driver Max Verstappen reckoned that with a clean run he could have beaten both Ferraris and achieved what would have been his best qualifying result of the season up to this point - P3.

Verstappen had set the fastest times in both FP1 and FP2 on Friday as the Red Bull team looked set to be more competitive than it has been all year, thanks to the chassis update brought by the team in Canada, and an engine upgrade by Renault in Baku, thought to giving them an extra two tenths per lap.

But he suffered a number of problems on Saturday, with a hydraulics related issue curtailing his running in FP3 and his engine cut out on him briefly in Q2 before a gear synching issue cost him crucial speed on the straights in his final run in Q3.

It will be especially disappointing considering how close he was to both Ferraris, being only 0.038 seconds behind Vettel and 0.186 seconds behind Raikkonen, showing without the problems it was certainly possible to gain position on both the Ferraris.

"I'm a bit disappointed at the moment with fifth, even though we had all the issues, but we should have been third, so we definitely made a step forward," said Verstappen. "You can see that there is a bit more horsepower, so that's good, but you always want more, and in the second sector, where all the corners are, we are in the fight.

"Of course the problem in P3 was not ideal, but also in Q2 I had some issues going to the limiter, the engine was cutting out a bit, so that was not good, then in Q3, on my final lap, when it counts, I was three-tenths faster than my previous lap, and then I lost gear sync, so on the straights I was losing a lot of lap time, which is of course very painful. We need to get on top of that, because it shouldn't happen."

Sam Gale