It has been 12 weeks since the reigning champion Max Verstappen won a race and 3 weeks since he last stood on the podium in Formula 1. As he is on a hunt for his fourth consecutive world champion title, all of the issues of the RB20 at this point are only putting more pressure on him.

In Baku, it seemed a bit better for Red Bull as Sergio Perez, who hasn’t beaten Verstappen in 33 qualifying sessions, was able to secure third place on the grid. However, Verstappen finished only sixth, while being still very frustrated with his car.

On Sunday Perez drove very nicely, until his collision with Carlos Sainz in the penultimate lap of the race, while battling for third place, ended his podium chances. Thanks to that, struggling Verstappen was able to at least secure the fifth place, even though his main Championship contender Lando Norris, finished fourth after starting fifteenth.

No surprise that Verstappen was very disappointed after the race. When speaking to the official F1 channel, he explained the main car issues that have ruined his race.

“My car was jumping around a lot in all the low-speed corners. My wheels were literally coming off the ground,” Verstappen said disappointed.

“Then of course you lose contact patch with the tarmac which you don’t want. That then caused me to slide a lot more, overheat the tyres more and there was no way to drive around it so the pace was just a bit all over the place.

“I had to box and then it was just a bit unfortunate I got stuck behind Alex and Lando. I was in that fight, George passed me, and then we actually had good pace, the two of us. We were catching the leaders.

“But then as soon as I got close to George again within that window where you have the dirty air, because of the jumping that I’m dealing with I’m sliding already quite a bit.

“And then when I get close to him I’m sliding even more and that just tipped it over the edge where it becomes quite uncontrollable towards the end of the race, which was very difficult again.”

The reigning champion also addressed how changes, made on his RB20 before the Azerbaijan Grand Prix, impacted the race for him.

“I think the changes we did to the car were positive, but then you still need of course to do the set-up on the car," the Dutchman explained.

“I think we were heading in the right direction but then the changes that we made before qualifying tipped it over the edge and we paid the price for that in the race unfortunately.”