“What the f*** is this about?” Verstappen rages over Red Bull fuel blunder
The reigning F1 champion was on course to take pole at the Marina Bay Street Circuit by over one second but was called into the pit lane by Red Bull in the final sequence of corners.
Verstappen will instead start from eighth on the grid, on the weekend he could take his second title if results go in his favour.
The Dutchman vented his frustration over team radio as he entered the pit lane at the end of Q3.
“Why? What the f***!” Verstappen asked over team radio. “What the f*** are you guys saying?
"Unbelievable mate, I don't get it. What the f*** is this about?”
Race engineer Gianpiero Lambiase replied: “We’ll talk about it once you are out, Max.”
It soon transpired that Verstappen didn't have had enough fuel in his car to give the FIA an adequate sample as part of the post-qualifying scrutineering checks hence why Red Bull decided to call him into the pit lane.
According to Article 6.5 of the FIA’s sporting regulations, competitors must ensure that a one-litre sample of fuel may be taken from the car at any time, and failure to do so results in a disqualification.
Reflecting on what happened in qualifying, Verstappen admitted the situation was “incredibly frustrating” and that “it shouldn’t happen.”
“I already felt the lap before as well but then they told me to abort so I was like OK, we will do it but on the final lap they told me to box and I realised what was going to happen - we were going to run out of fuel," Verstappen said. "It is incredibly frustrating and it shouldn’t happen.
“When you under fuel it or you don’t plan to do those six laps, at least you track that throughout the session that you’re not going to make it. We should have seen that way earlier. Not happy at all at the moment. I know, of course, it’s always a team effort and I can make mistakes, and the team can make mistakes but it’s never acceptable.
“Of course, you learn from it but this is really bad to be honest. It shouldn’t happen.”
Despite winning 11 of the 16 races in 2022, Verstappen stressed the need to be "perfect" and defended his criticial comments over team radio.
"I like the critical approach, because when I fu** up they can also tell me that I made a mistake, and I think it should be the other way around as well because that’s how we keep each other heading into the right direction," he added. "Because we want to be perfect - we don’t want to be good, we want to be perfect.”
Not all hope is lost for Verstappen as he was able to win in Hungary, Belgium and Italy from lowly grid positions.
However, given the difficulties in overtaking, Verstappen is unsure that he’s going to be able to take the victory with main rival Charles Leclerc starting on pole position.
“It’s a bit like Monaco, super hard to pass,” he added. “Maybe you can do a little bit with strategy. At the moment, I am not really in the mood to think about the race tomorrow.
“Once I jump in the car, I will always give it my very best but at the moment I am super frustrated about what happened.”
