Verstappen blames Massa for poor final Q3 run

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Max Verstappen will start Sunday's race from sixth place on the grid, but the teenager felt he deserved better.

He explained that his final run in qualifying at Bahrain International Circuit had been compromised by another car.

"My final run was hurt by my little friend on the right with the white suit!" he said, referring to Williams' Felipe Massa.

"I was preparing behind Lewis for my lap and we started to go up into the last corner," he continued.

"Felipe squeezed in front and I had to stay in first gear to keep a gap to him. The tyres cooled down which hurt my first sector.

"The tyres just cooled down too much because we already had quite a slow out lap so we were always on the limit.

"That just hurt my first sector. If you lose straight away two tenths that's not ideal," he added. "You try and catch up but you know it's very hard if the tyres are not in the window.

"The pace was there today but just not on the last run when it counted. Sometimes that happens if you have some traffic."

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Even so, sixth place on the grid is a huge step forward to where he started in China. He qualified on the back row after reliability issues in Q1, started from 16th after various grid penalties were applied, and made up nine places on the first lap alone.

"It was definitely possible to be a bit further forward today. But last time I started a bit further behind and ended on the podium. Anything is possible!"

Verstappen said that he is confident the RB13 is performing well in race trim this weekend. "Our car seems to work much better on this track. Hopefully we will get a clean start with no incidents, then see what we can do in the race.

"We have made many small improvements and tried to optimise everything which seemed to work. We understand the car more and more with every run that we do.

"I think Mercedes is still too fast for us but the Ferrari doesn’t look too far ahead," he added. "We are definitely closer.

"In the end we're not too far away and there's still a race to go so we'll see."

GALLERY: All the pictures from Saturday in Bahrain

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Andrew Lewin

Andrew first became a fan of Formula 1 during the time when Michael Schumacher and Damon Hill were stepping into the limelight after the era of Alain Prost, Nigel Mansell and Aryton Senna. He's been addicted ever since, and has been writing about the sport now for nearly a quarter of a century for a number of online news sites. He's also written professionally about GP2 (now Formula 2), GP3, IndyCar, World Rally Championship, MotoGP and NASCAR. In his other professional life, Andrew is a freelance writer, social media consultant, web developer/programmer, and digital specialist in the fields of accessibility, usability, IA, online communities and public sector procurement. He worked for many years in magazine production at Bauer Media, and for over a decade he was part of the digital media team at the UK government's communications department. Born and raised in Essex, Andrew currently lives and works in south-west London.