Verstappen: Final Q3 lap good for pole before Tsunoda spoil

Max Verstappen reckons he was on track to fight for pole on his second lap in Q3 when his flyer was spoilt by a screw-up by AlphaTauri's Yuki Tsunoda.

Red Bull headed into qualifying as the outright favourites following the team's strong showing versus Mercedes in free practice.

But in the final shootout, neither Verstappen or teammate Sergio Perez succeeded in upholding their performance on their first run.

Therefore, it all boiled down to the pair's second attempt in Q3, but both drivers' efforts were undone at Turn 10, where Perez was forced to take to the run-off area behind Tsunoda, while Verstappen arrived onto the scene unsure of what was going on.

"In Q3, the first lap was just horrible, just no grip, sliding around a lot," explained the Dutchman. "So when I saw the gap I was like 'fair enough, we just had a terrible lap'.

"We tried to make a few changes to how the car was running, and I think that second lap was looking quite okay. Not a great balance but still good enough to fight for pole.

"And then I don't know what happened between Yuki and Checo, then ended up like both going wide, and of course when you arrive at that speed, you see a lot of dust so you don't know…

"So I lifted off at [Turn] 10 and I realized they're driving slow, so they probably ran in to each other a bit, but then of course you momentum is gone.

"I lost two, two and a half tenths already from my lap time. You try to recover that in the last sector, but of course that never works.

"A big shame, from our side just a terrible qualifying, and we deserve to be where we are at the moment."

• Read also: Bottas and Hamilton pull off qualifying upset in Mexico

Despite the underperformance, Verstappen remained positive on his prospects for race day, noting earlier that starting third on the clean side of the track was better than starting second from where Hamilton will launch is race.

"Of course, I would have always like to be on pole and then see what happens into Turn 1," he said.

"But we just now have to accept what happened in qualifying. It's of course not what we want but it's not the end of the world.

"So we'll just focus on tomorrow, try to have a good start, see what happens into to Turn and then later in the race."

Ahead of qualifying, Red Bull crews were seen frantically working on both Verstappen and Perez's rear wings, a scene reminiscent of Austin two weeks ago.

But Verstappen had no real concerns over the RB16B's rear wing structure.

"There were a few things going wrong," he said. "I think we patched them up and fixed them, so normally it shouldn't be a problem."

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