Max Verstappen was left frustrated with an “undriveable” car at his disposal as he qualified seventh for the Austrian Grand Prix at the Red Bull Ring on Sunday. Missing grip and an unfortunate yellow flag resulted in the four-times world champion starting from the fourth row, as his hopes of winning a fifth consecutive Formula 1 title took another major jolt.Further, issues compounded for the 27-year-old as both George Russell and Totto Wolff all but confirmed that Mercedes are in the hunt to sign Verstappen for the next season, with the former’s contract extension being possibly held up for the same reason.
“The car is completely undriveable. I have no grip,” Verstappen told the team over the radio part way through Saturday qualifying.
Verstappen explained that his car was miles off pole even without the aforementioned yellow flag.“Hopefully tomorrow we can at least be competitive with Ferrari or Mercedes,” Verstappen said. “I don’t know even, because with the balance we had in quali that’s for sure not going to look great for tomorrow, but we will analyze everything.”Verstappen’s teammate Yuki Tsuonda crashed out in Q1 as he ended up 18th on the grid and complained about a lack of grip as well.McLaren’s Lando Norris grabbed pole and he admitted that he was expecting Red Bull to be quicker after the upgrades that they had reined in for the weekend. However, he asserted that he would not brush aside Verstappen from any competition, though he leads his counterpart by 21 points in the drivers’ championship.“Max has been our main contender for every race this season,” Norris said. “Just because he’s had a slightly worse qualifying today, definitely not going to count him out of of the race tomorrow and definitely not going to count him out for the rest of the season.”
