Max Verstappen might have claimed pole position for this weekend's Austrian Grand Prix in qualifying at the Red Bull Ring, but he wasn't happy with the number of track limits calls made by race control.
Many drivers - including Verstappen himself - had lap times deleted during the session after having been deemed to have drifted too far off track during their times laps.
Verstappen managed to bounce back and put in safe laps to ensure he topped each round of qualifying, but his Red Bull team mate Sergio Perez wasn't so lucky and ended up without a time on the board at the end of Q2.
“It’s great to be on pole here at the Red Bull Ring, it feels good," he said. "It wasn’t a straightforward qualifying because of all the track limits. It’s very hard to judge the white line here, a lot of us got caught out."
Verstappen said the stewards' zero-tolerance policy on track limits this weekend threatened to take "the joy out" of the sport and risked making the drivers look as through they didn't know what they were doing behind the wheel.
"I think today looked very silly," he fumed. "It almost looked like we were amateurs out there, the amount lap times that were getting deleted. I don't think it was a good look today.
"Of course people can say, 'Yeah, then stay within the white lines.' Well if it was that easy, then you can take my car and try it!" he added. "I don't think we're all idiots.
"No, it was very difficult because of all the track limits," he complained. "We don't do this on purpose, but with these speeds and these high-speed corners, it's so hard to judge the white line really."
Verstappen added that the size and weight of the current cars also made such fine margins difficult to adhere to. "That's why you could see today a lot of people were getting caught out including myself.
"So honestly it was about surviving, even in Q3," he explained. " We just needed to bank the laps as we weren’t able to push hard. It’s such a short lap here so we are all pretty close together."
"We’ve got a long weekend ahead so a lot can happen, tomorrow will be a completely different story. Today, the car was quick and we were ahead, that’s the most important thing.”
Verstappen was grateful that some of the other much-complained about aspects of the circuit such as the sausage kerbs and bollards marking track limits had been removed before the weekend at driver request.
"We luckily got rid of the stupid yellow kerbs because it was destroying our cars," he said. "It can be easily solved by just putting gravel next to the kerbs - but the bikes don't want that."
Update:
Max Verstappen was summoned to the stewards' office over two hours after clinching pole for allegedly impeding Haas' Kevin Magnussen n Q1.
However, the Dutchman was cleared by the officials and will start Sunday's Austrian Grand Prix from pole position as scheduled.
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