Verstappen ‘not happy’ with second amid reliability concerns

Despite charging from 15th to second, Max Verstappen was visibly disappointed to not get his hands on the Saudi Arabian Grand Prix winner’s trophy on Sunday.

Verstappen fell short of victory to his Red Bull teammate Sergio Perez by 5.355s after a tense final stint.

Even after the strong comeback drive, the reigning two-time world champion was frustrated not to collect maximum points.

Verstappen dominated each practice session, enjoying margins of 0.483s, 0.208s and 0.613s over second place, but his weekend was derailed by a drive shaft issue in qualifying.

This opened the door for Perez and despite a slow getaway, the Mexican took it with open arms  to claim a fifth Grand Prix win with what Red Bull team principal Christian Horner claimed was his “best drive” for the team.

There were plenty of celebrations for the 1-2 result in the Red Bull team, except from the Verstappen camp.

The 25-year-old was not afraid to vent his frustrations with a mechanical issue severely hurting his chances of chasing glory.

“Of course in general the whole feeling in the team is happy but personally I’m not happy because I’m not here to be second,” Verstappen said.

“Especially when you are working very hard also back at the factory to make sure that you arrive here in a good state and everything is spot on and then yeah, you have to do a recovery race, which I don’t mind doing.

“But when you’re fighting for a Championship and especially when it looks like it’s just between two cars, we have to make sure that also the two cars are reliable.”

Reliability was the reason why Verstappen was forced to start 15th – his second worst starting position in his last 70 races – was due to a driveshaft issue in Q2.

Car #1 looked a certainty for pole position after topping Q1 by almost half a second until he suddenly slowed in Q2 crying he had an “engine problem” after his RB19 just lost drive.

Even after climbing his way back up to second by Lap 25, Verstappen claimed his charge was halted by more mechanical issues.

This time he felt “similar” vibrations to the ones that led up to his qualifying demise forcing him to back off.

Despite going on the set the fastest lap of the race on the 50th and final tour of the Jeddah Corniche Circuit, Verstappen said these dramas forced him to “back off” and settle for second which was the “best possible” result.

“I think realistically with or without the Safety Car P2 was the highest possible,” he said.

“At one point, I again picked up these vibrations on the driveshaft, on the rear. The team couldn’t see anything, but I’m fairly sure there was something odd going on with the balance since the vibration started to kick in.

“In qualifying it just went (and) snapped. Today, luckily, it didn’t do that but it started to have a similar effect on the feeling of driving and what you could hear.

“Those last laps were enjoyable up until the point I backed off with the vibrations.

“I did the calculations and I wouldn’t have been able to close that gap to the end with only 10 laps left, so I thought it was more important to just settle for second, not having an issue with the car.”

Verstappen hopes to have a trouble free weekend at Albert Park on March 31-April 2.

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