Windsor: 'This is one reason why Verstappen went off in Q3'

Max Verstappen will start the Miami Grand Prix from third. Considering all the problems on Friday and the top speed of the Red Bull, it's a good starting position. Yet there could have been more, if the world champion had not made a mistake in his last qualifying lap.

Moments

Entering turn three, Verstappen had a moment, which forced him off the track. Gone lap, gone pole. Charles Leclerc and Carlos Sainz of Ferrari improved and pushed Verstappen off the first row of the grid.

Peter Windsor, leading F1 journalist, thinks he knows why Verstappen went off track in Q3: the soft tyres. Because of all the technical problems on Friday, the Dutchman had to gather all his information about the car's setup during FP3. In this, he drove almost all his laps on hard and medium tires. Verstappen hardly used the soft red ones.

Limited number of laps

Also during qualifying, the leading drivers kept the number of laps limited. After Q2, Verstappen had driven 11 laps on it, Leclerc 18. "Charles knows a lot about it, Max knows very little," he said. Because of the lack of knowledge of the tyre, Verstappen may not have been able to use it properly during Q3, Windsor believes.