Over the course of his successful career in F1, Max Verstappen's remarkable speed has sometimes led the Dutchman into the gravel trap, but outright blunders on race day have been a rare sight for the Red Bull charger.
Yet the 2016 US Grand Prix at the Circuit of the Americas during Verstappen's first season with Red Bull was the scene of a singular slipup by the two-time F1 world champion.
Verstappen had qualified sixth and was running among the top five when the first round of pitstops kicked off.
Verstappen had seen his Red Bull teammate Daniel Riccardo dive into the pits, after which he received an order to "push" from his team's pitwall.
A lap later, he confidently entered the pitlane, only to realise that he had not been called in!
"Then you assume that you will pit on this lap. That's why I accelerated, and then I drove into the pit lane," he recalled in an interview with Motorsport.com.
"I pulled into the pit entry and suddenly realised that I wasn't called to the pits at all. They never told me to stop. At that moment I was like, oh God, what am I doing here?"
Confused but quick to react, Red Bull's crews sprang into action.
"I said on the radio: 'Guys, I'm in the pit lane, I'm coming in, I'm coming in.' And at that moment I saw the mechanics running out with the tyres.
"Of course, the stop then was eight or ten seconds, which was still very fast."
His crews' swift effort proved vain however as Verstappen was sidelined shortly after returning to the track on lap 28 of 56 by a gearbox issue on his RB12.
But from then on, Verstappen permanently switched off his mental auto-pilot!
Keep up to date with all the F1 news via Facebook and Twitter
