Max Verstappen believes the loss of power he suffered in Q2 “ruined” his rhythm in qualifying for the Emilia Romagna Grand Prix.
Midway through his first run on medium compound tyres, Verstappen radioed his team to report a suspected issue with his Honda engine.
The problem forced him to pit in order for Red Bull to find the cause, which it revealed was a spark plug failure, and make repairs to try get him back out to set a laptime with the clock running down.
Verstappen made it back out on track with minutes to spare, managing to ease through to Q3 on another set of medium tyres, before qualifying half a second adrift of pole-sitter Valtteri Bottas in third place.
Reflecting on the engine issue, Verstappen felt it had an impact on his Q3 struggles having never really got it together over a single lap.
“I don’t know exactly what it was,” Verstappen said, as quoted by Motorsport.com.
“The bodywork had to go off, and the mechanics did a very good job to fix my car. But it basically ruined a bit my qualifying, because you have to go out on the medium, and try to nail the lap.
“We managed to get through on that, but the reference was a bit off. The first lap then in Q3, the tyres were too cold because I was in the middle of the train. I never really got into a nice rhythm where you know I’ve got a bit of time left there, I can push a bit harder. It was a bit messy.
“Even in Q3, the last lap, I was like well, I think we could have done quite a bit better here if we’d just had a smoother qualifying. But if you have that in Q2, and then you have to qualify on a different tyre as well midway through, it’s not great.
“I didn’t expect of course to beat [Mercedes] in qualifying, but I wanted to be a bit closer and make it a bit more exciting.
“Today it was just very tricky, and I never really found that rhythm throughout qualifying where you know you can put a new tyre set on and know where to find lap time.
“A bit of a shame, but still P3, so back in my seat.”
Verstappen’s engineer initially informed him to keep pushing despite the fault, but the Dutchman retreated to the pits as it “didn’t make sense” to finish the lap.
“I had power, then not, then it kicked in again, then not,” Verstappen explained.
“They told me keep going but I said guys, I’m losing quite a bit of lap time here on the straight.
“At one point I aborted because it didn’t make sense to continue. We’ll have a more detailed look what exactly went wrong. It’s not so lovely, but luckily we’re still here.”
Having been close to Mercedes on race pace in recent races, Verstappen hoped Red Bull could pose a threat, but is wary the Imola circuit is difficult to overtake on.
“The long run was alright, so hopefully it will be a bit similar tomorrow,” Verstappen said. “Let’s hope that top-speed wise, we are in a good position tomorrow.
“I don’t think it’s going to be very easy to pass anyway, but we’ll see what we can do.”
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