Max Verstappen, Red Bull's four-time world champion, could only manage eighth in qualifying for the Azerbaijan Grand Prix. Afterwards he laid into his team's engineers in front of the media. The Dutchman said his power unit had been misfiring throughout the session, costing him half a second to his teammate on the straight. He was just as blunt about his exchanges with the pit wall. "And then in Q3 you want to go for that middle run. Suddenly the battery wasn't full... They tell me to push with a half-charged battery. I said, 'Yeah, piss off.' I was really completely done with it for a moment," Verstappen admitted.
The technical fault also took a heavy toll on his tyres. After an aborted lap they lost temperature, and engine braking into the corners felt like pulling a handbrake. With the crisis deepening, Red Bull's mechanics are now working to establish whether the car will need a complete engine change. The main race on the Baku street circuit takes place on Saturday, and Verstappen will start from the fourth row.
