Doornbos dissatisfied with Honda: "Not good enough"

"In my opinion, it was not good," Doornbos looks back on a mediocre first day for Red Bull in Formule 1 cafe. "On paper, this is not one of their best circuits. In fact, Max has never achieved a top result here before."

The Sochi circuit has many 90 degree turns, which makes it difficult for Verstappen to stand out from the competition. "In those slow corners you can't make a difference and there are a lot of corners here. They're not nice corners in a Formula 1 car," he explains.

The pole position looks likely to go to Lewis Hamilton or Valtteri Bottas anyway, but the victory on Sunday also seems to be up for grabs in front of the German race team.

For Verstappen, it is to be hoped that his third engine of the year will not break down in Russia this weekend. "I didn't expect three failures in nine races either. In that sense Honda has always been conservative with developments, but now apparently they wanted more performance. It's just not good enough," concludes Doornbos.