Marko: 'Verstappen did not believe he had exceeded track limits'

The joy was short-lived. For half a minute, Verstappen thought he had driven the ultimate lap, but in the pit box, there were already fears that the fastest time would be taken away. Indeed, at turn 19, the world champion seemed to have gone just a little too wide. The FIA's verdict quickly followed: exceeding the track limits, gone time! Verstappen suddenly found himself back in what for him was now unreal, sixth position.

Sitting in the car, it is very difficult for drivers to judge where exactly they are on the track. There can be optical deception in whether or not the track limits are honoured. At first, for example, Verstappen did not want to know at all that he had coloured outside the lines, Helmut Marko told Auto, Motor und Sport. "When we showed him the camera footage from the front, he saw that he was clearly outside it," the Red Bull Racing external advisor said.

So, Verstappen finds himself back in starting spot six, while teammate Sergio Perez has to come from ninth on Sunday. A second Singapore scenario is looming when Red Bull was trailing all weekend. Unlike the track in Asia, the Circuit of the Americas should suit the RB19 just fine, but there was little evidence of that in qualifying.

'Red Bull made a mistake in preparation'

In Singapore, Red Bull engineers were unpleasantly surprised to find that the track was considerably flatter than expected in the simulator due to partial re-asphalting. As a result, the Austrians came to Singapore with the wrong set-up. "In Austin, we had a set-up that assumed there would be fewer bumps than was actually the case. We assumed last year's situation," Marko said.

So that turned out to be an expensive misconception. It is no secret that the ground under the circuit has been subsiding for years, and this has apparently gone faster in the past 12 months than Red Bull estimated. This means the world champions have a hefty job ahead of them on Sunday if they still want to win the race. After the first and only practice session of the weekend, all cars are under parc fermé rules, so major adjustments are no longer allowed.