Verstappen explains media absence in Baku

After the Azerbaijan Grand Prix, Max Verstappen chose not to face the media after more engine troubles ended his race. The Dutchman was in a battle for a podium before an engine issue cut short his day, much like what happened two weeks ago in Canada.

Verstappen received a fine due to his press pin incident but has defended himself, claiming it was the right thing to do:  "I didn't really feel like it at that moment," he revealed. "I stayed at the track for half an hour to talk about the race and the balance of the car with my engineers and then I left. I thought it was the smartest thing to do."

"During the race, I wasn't thinking about reliability and then suddenly I had a problem again. It's really gutting to drop out again when you're in such a good position and if you look at what happened afterwards.

"The team is still looking into the problem. It's definitely something with the engine. On Saturday during qualifying, I had to tune the engine down as well as the only Renault runner. That was pretty odd. But now the engine is done so we can put a new one in."

Some positives

Despite the poor result, Verstappen says that he can take some positives from the weekend. On the Friday practice sessions, Verstappen ended both FP1 and FP2 top of the timesheets and the team showed consistent pace all weekend.

"I think we were positively surprised in Baku," he said. "The car was doing well... but I really want to score points. In terms of outright speed the whole year has been quite good, but in terms of scoring points it really hasn't. The team expects me to do my best and I expect everything is perfect from Red Bull and the engine as well," he added. "It's very tough. This was an engine problem and, unfortunately, not the first time."

Fergal Walsh