Verstappen says sixth was the best he could do in “bad” session

Max Verstappen admitted he had a “bad” qualifying session in Abu Dhabi after taking sixth place on the grid.

“The whole weekend already I was just struggling with the car balance and just not happy with it,” the Red Bull driver told media after the final qualifying session of the year at Yas Marina.

“Sometimes you have those days you just have to accept it’s not going to be your day, you’re just fighting the car a lot. You still try to do the best possible job but that was sixth today.”

The two Red Bull drivers were separated by three-tenths of a second in qualifying with Daniel Ricciardo taking fourth place on the grid. Verstappen said he wasn’t satisfied with the balance of his RB13 and had made a lot of set-up changes as he tried to find its sweet spot.

“Run by run it’s a bit different because we change a lot of things: Front grip, rear grip. Qualifying was more, I guess, rear grip.”

“I don’t know what went wrong otherwise for sure we would have changed it. What we have to do now is understand what it was and hopefully we can learn something for tomorrow.”

Verstappen added he is concerned his set-up woes could make for a tricky race. “If you’re not happy in the short runs then normally the long runs are not great,” he said. “We’ll find out tomorrow.”

2017 Abu Dhabi Grand Prix

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