Max Verstappen says his Brazilian Grand Prix sprint qualifying was "just rubbish" after being restricted to sixth place in a Red Bull Formula 1 car that lacked grip and suffered over the bumps.
Verstappen and team-mate Yuki Tsunoda both appeared to struggle for grip around the newly resurfaced 4.3km Interlagos circuit, with Tsunoda dumped out in SQ1 while Verstappen only made it to the top 10 shootout by one tenth.
But despite advancing Verstappen never featured in the fight for sprint pole, which was won by McLaren's championship leader Lando Norris ahead of Andrea Kimi Antonelli and Oscar Piastri.
After reporting his car felt "completely broken" over the radio, Verstappen was beaten to sixth by Fernando Alonso.
"It was just rubbish," Verstappen told Viaplay. "I had a lot of vibrations in the car and bounced all over the place. Other than that I just had no grip in the slow corners. The car wouldn't turn and I had no traction either, so that was it."
After a reasonable run on the hard tyres in Friday's sole practice session, Verstappen's handling issues were exposed by his one-lap running on the soft tyre, abandoning his only FP1 qualifying sim.
"On hard tyres I didn't feel those problems that much, but on the softs it was already not feeling good. And it was the same story in sprint qualifying," he added.
Red Bull advisor Helmut Marko suggested that the squad hadn't put enough downforce on the car on Friday. With the cars locked in parc ferme until Saturday morning's sprint race, which is expected to be affected by rain, Marko's theory isn't very promising for the Dutchman's chances in the 24-lap sprint.
"It's basically no grip, which means we don't have enough downforce, and that's something which we can't cure for the sprint race," the Austrian told Sky. "But hopefully, with all the data we get, we can adapt and make it for the main race that we are more competitive.
"[If it rains] we hope for Max, he has to make the difference. Otherwise, he has no chance [to finish on the podium]."
Verstappen himself wasn't too sure rain could be his ally tomorrow like it has been at Interlagos in the past. He said: "I think it's quite clear that we are lacking something and I'm not expecting that suddenly to be miles better in the wet. For us it's just quite poor."
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