Max Verstappen was deeply unhappy with the performance of his Red Bull on Saturday during qualifying for the Azerbaijan Grand Prix in Baku, calling the car "incredibly unpredictable and difficult" on Saturday.
The team had been hoping that new upgrades introduced this weekend would help bring the RB20 out of the slump it's been in since Austria, which has allowed their rivals to reel them in in the in the championship standings.
While things initially looked promising in first practice on Friday, it unravelled as the weekend has gone on leaving Verstappen qualifying in sixth place putting him two places behind team mate Sergio Perez on the grid.
Although Perez had a better experience, that's not what either Verstappen or the team were hoping for to revitalise their title bid. Even more worrying was Verstappen's report about what went wrong on Saturday.
“From the first lap that I did in qualifying I was not happy with the car, and I just tried to drive around it,” he said.
“When you’re not confident and comfortable with the car on a street circuit, you cannot push to the limit and I think basically that’s what happened," he pointed out. “As soon as it matters, people start risking more.
"As soon as I went out in Q1, I just felt the car took a step back," Verstappen told the media in the paddock at Baku after the session. "We made some changes and the car just became incredibly unpredictable and difficult.
"That caused a lot of bouncing in the back of the car when turning in and out of a corner," he continued. "I just didn’t feel comfortable to attack because the car was just very difficult, jumping a lot, losing contact patch with the tarmac, so not very nice.
"In Q2 it still went relatively well, but the car did not feel good and I couldn't get the maximum out of it. I had too much oversteer, and you don't want that on a street circuit. Unfortunately, we just tipped it over the edge.
"Of course, I'm a bit disappointed with that, because you always try to make things better," he sighed. "Of course, I went off in the last corner which also didn’t help. I lost it in the last corner on my first run in Q3.
"You still have a run to improve your lap time, but I just didn't have the feeling in the car. We changed some things and know what the problem is, but it's a bummer."
Verstappen memorably called his car a "monster" in Monza -= and not in a good way. The good news was that he felt that had managed to tame the beast to a significant extent this week.
"We did improve the car, but now with the set-up we tried to make a few things better and unfortunately it went the other way," he said. "The way the car feels now is not good.
"It would have been nice to have been on the front row. We will see what happens tomorrow: it is not ideal starting from P6, and the Ferraris are always quick around here, but the cars looked quite close today."
One silver lining for Red Bull was a solid day for Sergio Perez. Last year's Baku race winner out-qualified his team mate and will line up for tomorrow's place from fourth place on the grid alongside Ferrari's Carlos Sainz.
"I’m a bit disappointed because I felt like P2 on a perfect lap should have been possible," he told the media in the paddock. “I had a scrappy sector two where I probably missed a tenth, a tenth and a half. It’s probably the same for everyone though.
"We've had a very difficult period [but] the team has done a tremendous job on bringing upgrades to correct the issues we've been having. "I think it's probably the biggest progress we've made with the car since the beginning of the year.
"If I had arrived here with the car that I had for the entire season, I would have had a similar result [bot now] the car is allowing me to be confident," he added. "Hopefully that can translate into race pace tomorrow as well. The car balance is definitely going in the right direction."
Perez is hoping that he can deliver a strong performance tomorrow although he admitted that "Ferrari were in another league" at the front.
“In the first stint I should be strong. It will be down to the amount of progress I’m able to make, and then from then on just head down and hopefully we are able to be as strong in the race. That will be very important.
"We’ll see tomorrow. We are very different to everyone else so we’ll see what we are able to do and see what we are able to achieve."
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