Frustrated Verstappen: Norris frustrates his pole in Singapore, Russell achieves 1st

Verstappen laments the loss of the pole position in Singapore

Max Verstappen expressed his frustration after qualifying in Singapore, where he secured second position on the starting grid. The Red Bull driver felt that the proximity to Lando Norris, his rival in the championship, prevented him from fighting for the pole position. Verstappen finished 0.182 seconds behind George Russell, who took the pole. However, before being affected by the dirty air generated by Norris’ McLaren, the Dutchman was only 0.05 seconds behind Russell’s time. The Red Bull driver experienced understeer at Turn 15, which he attributed to the proximity of the McLaren, and aborted his lap exiting Turn 16.

“That’s what happens when there’s a car in front of you just cruising, only two seconds ahead,” Verstappen commented referring to Norris after the session.

Max Verstappen

Norris, who qualified in fifth place, was heading to the boxes after completing his last attempt in Q3. Verstappen, who left his last lap for the last moment, pointed out that drivers on slow laps know that they must leave greater spaces to cars on fast laps in Singapore, due to the impact that dirty air can have on the car behind. “The lap itself was going well, but, again, here, nailing all the corners is very difficult,” said Verstappen. “But yes, unfortunately I had a car like two seconds ahead of me in the last chicane.” “In qualifying, you can’t have that. You can’t have any kind of disturbance when you want to push in Q3. And that’s what happened.” “I had to abort the lap because of that. So it was a bit unfortunate. Otherwise, I think it would have been a very close battle for first place. But it is what it is.” “There’s nothing you can do about it. So you just have to move on.” When asked if he would speak to Norris about the incident, Verstappen added: “No. I think it’s pretty clear, you know?” “That’s something that’s not nice when it happens to someone. I think in general, we’re always pretty good at that. All the drivers, we try to get out of the way.” “I mean, sometimes, of course, it’s always a bit more complicated in certain scenarios. So each scenario is a little different. But in this case, in Q3 with only 10 cars on the track, I think it could have been avoided.”

Norris seemed puzzled by Verstappen’s comments after the session, stating that he was not aware that there was any problem at that moment. “I was about three seconds ahead or something like that,” he said. “I can’t understand [what Verstappen complained about]. It’s normal.” Added: “They always complain. They complain about everything. It’s Red Bull.”