Verstappen makes no promises: 'It went pretty badly for us'

Verstappen: "I thought: this must be a joke"

Free practice went fine for Red Bull, but later in the day, the RB20 did not perform as expected. "Yes, practise felt really nice. I felt like the car was in a really good window. But then somehow in qualifying, it didn't feel like that anymore and I was really not happy," Verstappen explained to F1TV.

"SQ2, it was just a terrible lap, I had no grip," the championship leader continued. In the third part of sprint qualifying, things didn't go much better for his liking: "And then I went into SQ3 with the soft tyre, and I only saw that I was going two-tenths faster than I had in my dash, and also the lap itself, just sliding around, no grip. They then told me we were a P1. I was like, it must be a joke!"

Asked about his expectations for the sprint race, Verstappen says: "I mean, normally, once the tyres start to stabilise, it should all be a bit more normal. I think, around a track like this, where it's still quite a low grip if the tyres are not in the right window, you can feel either really good or really bad."

"Today we felt pretty bad. But I guess everyone else also didn't get it together in the final run on the soft tyres. But, yes, we'll analyse it. But normally, once we're in race-based conditions, it all stabilises a bit more and it should be a bit better," said the three-time world champion.