Max Verstappen was thoroughly disappointed with his qualifying performance this afternoon, the Dutchman securing a place in Q3 along with his team mate but ending the session in 10th position, although he will move up to 9th as a result of Sainz incurring a penalty and starting from the pit lane.
The Toro Rosso junior's day got off to a rocky start when he damaged his rear wing after hitting the barriers on the exit of the final corner in the morning's free practice session, although he insisted the mishap had no bearing on his afternoon performance, pointing instead to excessively low tyre temperatures.
"Normally we are quite good in cool conditions," Verstappen said. " I don’t know what happened. For everybody it was quite hard to bring up the fronts, but in Q3 for me it was the front and rear because I nearly spun at turn six. The tyres were not working, and when the tyre aren't working, what can you do ?"
Verstappen, who had never raced at Monaco before this weekend, has acquitted himself well overall, but felt fairly despondent about a performance he was hoping would be much better.
"After one or two laps, the rears drop off quite a lot. You really have to make it work on your second lap. These things happen, the whole weekend has been great and you want to perform in Q3 but we had problems. Hopefully we can have a clean first lap and we can have a good race."
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