Verstappen rues lost points in Russia

Max Verstappen was left frustrated after missing out on a significant haul of points in the Russian Grand Prix.

Having escaped the collisions at the start of the race, Verstappen was running comfortably in sixth place and pulling away from Fernando Alonso when a power unit problem forced him to retire 20 laps from the end of the race. With Toro Rosso only scoring 17 points so far this season despite a quick car, Verstappen was left disappointed to miss out on adding eight more to his personal tally.

"I think there was something with the power unit, because you could see smoke coming out but we don’t know the exact issue yet," Verstappen said. "We’ll find out when the car comes back. It’s a shame because we could have scored a lot of points. Suddenly something started shaking and there was no power any more.

"The team asked me to stop the car on track. The laps before I was still going fine. I never thought about that, I was just managing everything and so far we never had any issues and then suddenly it kicked in. It’s a shame but we try to do it better next time."

And Verstappen admits he had been fortunate to escape from Turn 3 without damage having been close to the incident which ended Sebastian Vettel's race.

"It seemed that all the guys in front of me tried to brake so late, that they all locked up and touched each other. I had the right line out of the corner. I had a good exit and chose the outside line and then honestly I don’t know what happened on the inside.

"I think Vettel got a puncture, he braked and [Daniil] Kvyat smashed into the back of him and Vettel spun. I was completely on the outside. I was very lucky, I almost got caught by Vettel. Everybody lost a bit of momentum and I just went around the outside."

REPORT: Rosberg eases to win after Kvyat takes out Vettel

AS IT HAPPENED: 2016 Russian Grand Prix

Breakfast with ... Martin Brundle

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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.