Verstappen upbeat after “one of my hardest weekends”

Verstappen couldn't find the right balance with the upgraded RB13 throughout practice, and was well off teammate Daniel Ricciardo, who topped both sessions on Friday.

But the Dutchman bounced back in qualifying, placing second and third in Q1 and Q2 respectively before qualifying behind the Ferraris and Mercedes in the top-10 shootout.

“I just couldn’t get it to work properly, always understeer or oversteer in places where I didn’t like it,” said Verstappen. “Compared to Daniel, who seemed very happy [yesterday], so we changed a lot on the car, a lot of hard work, I think it was one of the hardest weekends of my career in F1. Happy to be fifth, then.

“I was not happy with the car yesterday, so I’m actually quite pleased about where we ended up. Yesterday I was struggling with the car quite a lot, I couldn’t find the right balance even in the last practice today.

“I didn’t feel great in the car, normally I’m always quite confident in this car, but this weekend has been quite difficult. Then in qualifying we managed to turn it around.

“Q1 and Q2 was actually very good, but then we know in Q3 it’s hard for us to step up by four of five tenths, we don’t have an extra engine mode.

“I’m very pleased, my final run was a bit of a shame, I put a bit too much front wing into the car and I was oversteering a bit more.”

Ricciardo frustrated with sixth

Teammate Ricciardo was downbeat after qualifying sixth, bemoaning a lack of track time in FP3 due to an engine hydraulic failure.

“I feel like we’re better than sixth, so that’s frustrating,” said Ricciardo. “For sure I could’ve cleaned up a few areas, so a bit of a crappy session.

“I think we’ll be strong tomorrow. I wish the race was in about two minutes’ time. Tomorrow will be fun; we won’t make any friends tomorrow.”