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Max Verstappen put down his radio outburst after his messed-up qualifying to his and his team's drive to be perfect.
Verstappen was on his way to a stunning pole position during the 2022 F1 Singapore GP qualifying. He was nine-tenths of a second quicker than the concurrent pole lap after Sector 2 and was locked in for pole position. It was at this time that Red Bull called him into the pits and told him not to complete the lap.
Max Verstappen was furious at the team and what followed was an expletive-filled team radio from the driver. Speaking to the media afterward, the Red Bull driver revealed that it was a lack of fuel that prevented him from completing the lap.
He also defended his outburst on team radio by stressing that both he and the team strive to be perfect and that he won't mind if the team calls him out for making a mistake. He said:
"I like the critical approach, because when I f*ck up, they can also tell me that you know? That I make a mistake. It should be the other way around as well, because that's how we keep each other heading into the right direction, because we want to be perfect -we don't want to be good - we want to be perfect. I think they knew when they saw my face and what I said on the radio [that I was not happy.]"
Further elaborating on the fuel issue, Max Verstappen explained that the team did get a bit of a surprise with the extra lap. The car was fueled for five laps and the extra lap pushed the team into a situation where if he finished the lap he would not have the fuel to complete the slowdown lap. He said:
"We got a little bit surprised that we had that extra lap, but you can track that, you see it coming. That's why I don't really understand how it was missed, and, of course, in hindsight, they should have let me finish the lap before where they told me to abort already to make a gap for the last lap. All of this was also triggered by Pierre [Gasly going off at Turn 18] in front of me, so that's why I had to create a gap for that final lap, because I was getting close to him. But that's not an excuse."
The car was working quite well: Max Verstappen
Max Verstappen's disappointment was further accentuated by his assertion that the car he had under him was working well and there was potential for a strong result. He said:
"I can't see how much fuel is in the car, but we have all the sensors in the world to track these kinds of things. [It's] incredibly frustrating, because I think we had a good car. And I think you could see that already in Q3 that the car was really good on slicks. Of course, the conditions are tricky, but I liked that. The car was working quite well."
Max Verstappen will be starting the race in P8 and it will be interesting to see what kind of race he has on Sunday.
