Max Verstappen, Red Bull, Istanbul Park, 2021

Verstappen says power loss from battery didn’t cost him pole

2021 Turkish Grand Prix

Posted on

| Written by

Max Verstappen says the loss of power from his battery during his final qualifying lap didn’t cost him pole position for the Turkish Grand Prix.

The Red Bull driver set the third-fastest time in qualifying, and will move up to second after Lewis Hamilton’s grid penalty.

He ended the session less than two tenths of a second behind pole-winner Valtteri Bottas. Verstappen told his team the “battery ran out too early” after his final lap.

However he doesn’t believe his RB16B was quick enough for pole position without that problem.

“The laps overall were quite good, even though on the last lap I lost a bit down the straight,” he said. “We’ll have to look into that. But there was of course not the lap time in it to fight for pole.”

After a difficult Friday the Red Bull driver looked competitive from the beginning of qualifying, where rain earlier in the morning made the track surface treacherous.

“Qualifying was quite tricky at the beginning, with the conditions,” Verstappen said. “But I think compared to yesterday, we actually managed to turn it around quite well.”

“I think quite a decent recovery compared to yesterday,” he added. “So third is the maximum today and tomorrow, lining up in second. Let’s wait and see, as well, what the weather will do overnight. But overall, I’m pretty happy.”

Verstappen is unsure whether the improved pace Red Bull had shown in qualifying would continue into the race. “It should be a bit better, let’s see how competitive we are going to be in the race,” he said.

“Also tyre wear seems quite high around this but at least now the track is a lot of fun to drive, especially the long left hand of turn eight, but we’ll find out tomorrow.”

Advert | Become a RaceFans supporter and go ad-free

2021 Turkish Grand Prix

Browse all 2021 Turkish Grand Prix articles

Author information

Hazel Southwell
Hazel is a motorsport and automotive journalist with a particular interest in hybrid systems, electrification, batteries and new fuel technologies....

Got a potential story, tip or enquiry? Find out more about RaceFans and contact us here.

13 comments on “Verstappen says power loss from battery didn’t cost him pole”

  1. I like the honesty in Max, when the car is great he compliments it and doesn’t downplays the car, and doesn’t make any excuses either, always honest assessment.

    1. Absolutely, completely different to the utter lies in the mercedes team.

    2. @illusive You mean like the offensive way he was cursing about the car in free practice? Or how last season he was going utterly ballistic when he had some issues with the car. They beeped away half of the conversations he had on Monza and Portimao and such.

      Plus Verstappen has had the fastest car all season. He constantly downplays this and pretends the car is slower than Mercedes. This time Verstappen clearly failed again to get his car setup properly (just like he couldn’t in Silverstone, Hungary and Monza and keeps on cursing how the car is not doing what he wants. So we don’t know what the Red Bull car could have done on these tracks in a driver better able to set it up. But surely Hungary and Turkey should be tracks massively favoring Red Bull with it’s demands on downforce.

      OR all the lies about how Hamilton was killing Verstappen. It’s just an unending parade of propaganda and flat out lies from Marko, Horner and Verstappen.

  2. Was turn 8 taken flat out?

    1. yes he did(as shown on TV).

    2. @f1fan-2000 Every team managed that corner at full-throttle already yesterday, including Haas.

      1. Even I can do that full throttle, but that’s hardly worth mentioning.
        So, the fact a haas can do full throttle does not tell anything.

  3. Of course it did. It also looked like he only had 3 tyres on and no front wing. Max is such a hero driver he managed to drag that car into p2. Honestly incredible.

    1. Naughty 😁

  4. That power loss went entirely unnoticed at the time. No radio comm broadcasted or anything else.

    1. I noticed it immediately as his top speed on his final run was only 194mph not 199/200mph as on his previous runs.

  5. Guessing that explains the subpar performance, maybe could’ve fought for pole with bottas though, he wasn’t that far.

    1. @esploratore1 Ah at least you are finally starting to notice Verstappen indeed performing subpar in Q3.

Comments are closed.