At the start of the sprint in Qatar, Max Verstappen let Lewis Hamilton pass, and Nico Hulkenberg and Pierre Gasly on the first lap. The current world champion managed to regain the position by overtaking Gasly in the battle for eighth place, but that ended his rise to the top.
Max Verstappen: “To be honest, I don’t think I had the speed to challenge the leaders today. If we talk about the start, there was nothing unusual about it, Lewis just started really well and overtook me on the straight.
During the sprint I tried to stay out of trouble, but the car was constantly sliding and I had quite a few dangerous moments. But this happens all weekend – the car has no balance entering corners and in the corners themselves.
The behavior of the car is very extreme and during the sprint I couldn’t even overtake Nico Hulkenberg! This says a lot about us: the weekend is going very badly.”
Source: F1 News
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