From spaceship to laughing stock
“It was a shocking experience”. Max Verstappen via radio at the end of Q2 after the concise elimination thus undermined the work of the Milton Keynes team which in Singapore was unable to find the solution to the set-up puzzle which even led to the double elimination in Q2 of Max Verstappen and by Sergio Perez.
The Dutchman closed the lap, but by seven thousandths Liam Lawson ousted him from Q3. Sergio Perez, on the other hand, remained entangled in a continuum short circuit between understeer and oversteer in Turn-1, ending up spinning shortly after in an attempt to control a Red Bull that was, to say the least, erratic. At the end of the Grand Prix Max Verstappen declared that perhaps during the race the team and the drivers understood what went wrong at Marina Bay on this haunted weekend, but the answer can only come in 2024 when the Circus returns to Singapore.
Lando Norris admitted in the press conference that he laughed in front of the Red Bull on board in Qualifying: “When I saw the on board I laughedeven Verstappen laughed, I’ve never seen a car go so badly before”. That Red Bull would suffer in Qualifying in Singapore was a topic debated in the paddock on the eve of Marina Bay, but no one would have ever imagined a debacle of this magnitude.
From spaceship to laughing stock therefore, even if the McLaren driver is convinced like many others that it was simply an accident on the road to be attributed to the characteristics of the Asian track indigestible to the Red Bull RB19, a car that thrives in ’round’ curves ‘ and not in the city corners: “We’ll see next weekend, I think they will return to the top – added Norris – I don’t know what exactly they had trouble with this weekend.”
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