Red Bull again with only one F1 car in front after Perez miss: Verstappen reacts

Verstappen defends stranded Perez

He is trying not to think too much about Sunday's Formula 1 race just yet. "I try not to think about it, at the end of the day you always have to do it yourself, I mean no one is gonna help you win a race or whatever, you have to really go out from your own strength and of course super unfortunate to lose Checo in Q1 but  from my side, tomorrow is a new day where first of all we have to wait and see what the weather will do," Verstappen told the likes of GPblog.

However, the Dutchman does expect to compete, provided the car is in order and the start goes smoothly. "I'm confident that if we just have a clean car let's say like that we can be in the mix, I mean I'm not saying that we're going to be the quickest but at least when we're in the mix there's always something possible," he adds.

Asked about missing a teammate in his battle with the ever-stronger competition, Verstappen says: "Well, naturally of course you always want two cars there but honestly today I think that is just a bit unlucky and unfortunate what happened with McLaren because we didn't really get to see his pace and qualifying."

Verstappen therefore refuses to be dismissive of his teammate, who is coming off a string of disappointing results. "I find it always difficult to comment on today because yesterday when he jumped in the car in FP2, he looked decent, you know? So it's a bit unfair to say that this weekend it's been, let's say, off or whatever because I actually felt that in FP2 he felt good."

This article was written in collaboration with Sophia Crothall.