Max Verstappen has identified an unexpected issue that Red Bull will need to investigate following a tricky qualifying at the Formula 1 Italian Grand Prix.
Coming into the session having secured a positive top three result in FP3 earlier, the Dutchman couldn’t continue his success during qualifying. He struggled to fight at the front and ended the session in sixth place.
Verstappen complained to his race engineer during the session about an issue with his rear axle. Speaking after the session, he noted that this was not the first time over the course of the weekend the issue had appeared.
“In FP3, we actually had a very good improvement overnight,” Verstappen said.
“The car was in a much better window, but we didn’t really touch the car too much going into qualifying.
“I suddenly had a feeling that something failed on the rear axle again, not the wing, but something else mechanically, which we have to look into again.
“It’s not the first time this happened, but it happened at random times over the weekend.
“Unfortunately, now it happened at the most important part.”
Max Verstappen: Rear axle issue happened at the “most important” moment
After his teammate Liam Lawson failed to advance to Q3, Verstappen also had to qualify without a tow in the final session. The New Zealand driver was impeded during Q2 by McLaren’s Oscar Piastri, who has since received a three-place grid penalty for the incident.
Despite this, Verstappen argued he would still have struggled to get a better result due to the issues he was having with the car.
“When you have these kind of problems, it becomes super difficult to drive,” he said.
“The car is not compliant anymore when it should [be] over bumps and kerbs, and that’s just costing lap time.
“I actually thought that with how the car was responding in FP3, I didn’t think I was fighting for pole, but it was quite a comfortable car to drive for once. That was actually really nice but unfortunately we picked up another problem.”
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