The three-time world champion and championship leader, Max Verstappen, is under quite a lot of pressure at this point. Red Bull can’t really find a solution for the problems with the RB20 and McLaren is catching up.

Although Lando Norris, who is Verstappen’s closest rival in the Driver’s Championship, had even worse qualifying than the Dutchman (he finished P17), he wasn’t happy with the performance of his car at all. 

His teammate Sergio Perez managed to out-qualify him for the first time since last year’s Miami GP as the Mexican driver will start fourth tomorrow and Verstappen only sixth.

"I already knew after the first run in Q1 that it was going to be difficult," Verstappen told Viaplay.

"We changed a few things on the car and that made it very difficult. The car bounced a lot at the back when entering and exiting the corner.

"That made it very difficult, although Q2 went pretty well. But in the car it already didn't feel good, I couldn't optimise and I had just too much understeer. You don't want that on a street circuit."

Verstappen was really driving on the limits during the whole Friday as the car wasn’t really working the way he would like to. He highlighted that on Saturday it was even worse.

"Q3 had to be better, but in the first run I had that little mistake in the last corner," said the reigning champion.

"The car broke out and in the last run, I was bouncing a lot again. If you're not completely comfortable then you can't attack.

"We changed some things [to the car], that's a bummer.

"Of course, you always try to make the best of it. I'm not dejected in the car, but I knew it was going to be difficult. Even the long runs don't go well when the car feels like this. We'll see."