Max Verstappen and Red Bull probably didn’t wish the happiest of summer’s after another engine issue resulted in an early retirement for the Dutchman at the Hungarian GP.
The 20-year-old had done the hard work of fixing the damage from qualifying by passing both Pierre Gasly and Carlos Sainz into Turn 1 at the start and looked like he could play a role in the battle between the Mercedes’ and Ferrari’s.
No sooner had he settled in fifth, however, an MGU-K problem saw him pull over to the side of the track with a furious sweary rant over the radio following as Max expressed his frustration.
“It is just, at the moment, difficult to accept,” he said. “I was very angry on the radio, I think there was a lot of bleeping out there, which was a shame that they bleeped it away because it would have been better if they would have allowed it but that is how it is.”
This failure follows three engine-related retirements for teammate Daniel Ricciardo already although it is the first instance of one impacting Verstappen.
Commenting just a few minutes after the failure on Sky Sports, Red Bull boss Christian Horner also expressed his dismay.
“I am not going to get drawn into saying too much,” he said initially. “But we pay multi-millions of pounds for these engines, for a first-class product, a state-of-the-art product, and you can see it is quite clearly some way below that.
“So it is frustrating. That is what it is. I will let [Renault Sport managing director] Cyril [Abiteboul] come up with his excuses afterwards.”
What made the situation worse for Verstappen though, was the potential Red Bull had in the dry at the Hungaroring, as shown by Ricciardo’s recovery from P16 to P4.
“I mean, I was like 25 seconds ahead [of Ricciardo] because of the starting position I was in,” Max continued.
“Again it is valuable points just thrown away so yeah, let’s see what we have to do in Spa. Whether we have to take penalties or not, I don’t know, but at the moment, I also don’t really care.”
