Max Verstappen “so upset” to miss out on F1 Turkish GP pole position

Max Verstappen admitted he was “so upset” to miss out on pole position for Formula 1’s Turkish Grand Prix after being quickest in every session until the very end of qualifying.

After topping all three practice sessions on F1’s return to Istanbul Park, the Red Bull driver had been in stunning form earlier in qualifying when the track was at its wettest and required the use of the extreme wet weather tyres.

But Verstappen was upstaged by Racing Point’s Lance Stroll when the field switched onto Intermediates for the final runs of Q3, with the Canadian outpacing Verstappen by 0.290s to snatch a shock maiden F1 pole position.

“I’m just upset because the whole weekend we are first, we look very comfortable, and then we lose out in Q3,” Verstappen said.

“At the end of the day I don’t care where the Mercedes is. I just look at our performance and that’s not just good in Q3. That’s why I’m so upset.

“You can’t look at other people’s performance to judge your performance you have to look at yourself. And clearly in Q3 it was not good.”

Verstappen was at a loss to explain why he struggled to find improvement on the Intermediate compound.

“I was going faster but I had no grip compared to the balance I had before,” he added. “Probably it was the right tyre to be on but it was not good like that.

“We should have been doing better switching to that tyre compared to what we were doing before. We were constantly in first compared to everyone else on the extreme tyre. So we definitely missed something there.

"Already in Q1 when we tried to go out on the inters we had no grip. They were horrible for us. The extreme tyres were good, we were very comfortable."

Red Bull team principal Christian Horner was equally disappointed by how qualifying panned out.

“We struggled to turn the inters on compared to the extreme and you can see that these tyres are pretty tricky,” he explained.

“Max had looked supreme in Q1 and Q2 and then got caught behind Kimi on a couple of laps that didn’t allow him to turn those tyres on and that final lap he had a snap [of oversteer] and lost about 0.6s at Turn 7.

“So to miss out on the pole is really disappointing for him. Nonetheless it’s a good grid position, but having been so dominant it was disappointing to lose out right at the last moment.”