MEXICO CITY -- Max Verstappen was left frustrated after missing out on the first pole position of his career by just 0.083s at the Mexican Grand Prix.
Verstappen looked like the man to beat throughout qualifying after lowering the benchmark time to a 1:16.524 in Q2 while the rest of field was still in the high 1:16s and 1:17s. However, in the final session he failed to improve on his Q2 lap and his best effort of 1:16.574 was beaten in the dying moments of the session by Ferrari's Sebastian Vettel.
"I'm super annoyed!" Verstappen said. "In Q3 it got a bit more difficult and I couldn't really get the tyres to work [like they did in Q2].
"Second place is good but not with the way it went. I gave it all today and it was just not enough. I really wanted that pole position. At least we have a decent start position."
"You always go for pole position and Q2 was looking really good but somehow in Q3 I couldn't switch the tyres on and I couldn't go faster, simple as that. On this track it's really slippery and for me the front tires were not working so I just had understeer.
"On this track you need to turn the car quickly in the very low-speed corners and that was not happening in Q3 so I couldn't improve. Of course second is still a good place but especially after Q2 I was hoping for more."
At the time of writing, Verstappen's second place position was under investigation after it was alleged he impeded Valtteri Bottas at the start of Q3. Verstappen was on a slow lap as Bottas exited Turn 12 and his presence on the exit meant the Mercedes driver missed his braking point at Turn 13. But for Verstappen there was no question over whether he might receive a penalty.
"Which incident?" he said when asked about his opinion. "I was on the inside, he was just doing his line and he locked up so there is no incident. There may be [an investigation] but for me there is no incident."