Verstappen: Red Bull should be ahead of Ferrari

Max Verstappen insists Red Bull should have qualified ahead of Ferrari at the Azerbaijan Grand Prix after a number of "frustrating" problems left him fifth on the grid.

Having been fastest in both of Friday's practice sessions, Verstappen was hit by a power unit issue that saw him stop on track during FP3. A recurrence of the issue saw him turn the power unit down during qualifying and then he says further gremlins cost him time in the fight for third behind Lewis Hamilton and Valtteri Bottas.

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"Where do we start?" Verstappen replied when asked why he wasn't happy with his qualifying session. "In Q2, I had the issue going to the limiter, a bit similar what we had in the last practice so we had to wind the engine down which cost me quite a bit of lap time, which was a shame.

"The car in general was always improving; I think the main target was to get the front tires to work in the first sector. I think in Q3 it got quite a bit better because of the last run. I nearly improved by three-tenths then going into Turn 7 I had a little lock-up so went a bit wide, so by having a bit more wheel spin than usual I lost gear sync so all the way up through the castle and then long straight I was having very hard shifts so I lost more or less two-tenths because of it.

"Today that cost me P3, you know though those things together with what happened in Q2 already where we had to wind the engine back. Yeah, it's a shame.

"Frustrating, it's a bit unfortunate with all the things we had today. We couldn't extract more out of the car but we just need to get on top all of those things that went wrong including this morning, which of course is not an ideal preparation for qualifying. But also then in qualifying we have to wind the engine back instead of up so it's a bit of a shame. We will try and get on top of that and try to do better next time."

Despite feeling he'd missed out on a better grid position, Verstappen says he is pleased with the progress Red Bull has made to be competitive on a power-sensitive circuit.

"We should be ahead [of Ferrari] without all things happening in qualifying so yeah it's looking a lot better, but of course when you're looking to Mercedes we know we have to improve, but we know they have this power mode which they can use twice maybe?

"So we still have to work but I think the car in general when you look to sector two, where you have most of the corners, we were very competitive so I can be happy with that."