Verstappen reckons missing final lap was unavoidable

Verstappen was to be the last driver to start his final flyer, but was a couple of seconds too late to cross the finish line.

The Red Bull driver wound up fourth as a result.

Verstappen reckons that, with all the cars in front of him, there was little he could do to go quicker and make it in time to cross the line.

"I think it was a bit unfortunate to miss out for one or two seconds because everybody was backing off in the last sector, of course, and I was the last car," he explained.

"So I wanted to leave space because, once you are stuck behind them, you are not going to improve your laptime anyway.

"They told me to speed up, but I was stuck.

"It's a bit unfortunate, but we are in the second row, so everything is possible for tomorrow."

Despite not crossing the finish line in time, Verstappen kept pushing and says his Sector 1 time was half a second better than his previous best, which he reckons would have been good enough to challenge Nico Rosberg's time.

He admitted, however, that with the yellow flags he probably would have been slower anyway.

"I think that even if I made it I wouldn't have improved my laptime because there was the yellow flag," he said.

"Once I got the [chequered] flag I thought I'd just keep pushing and see what happens and I was straight away half a second faster in the first sector, so if that counted I think I would have been very close to Nico."

Additional reporting by Jonathan Noble