Verstappen on 2018 start: "Annoying how everybody thinks they know best"

During his rather bad start of the 2018-season, Max Verstappen has revealed to have been very annoyed with all pundits and journalists who claim to know why things went wrong for the Dutchman.

For the first six races of the season, the then-20-year-old Verstappen didn't look like himself. He made constant errors and shot himself in the foot too many times, resulting in him being criticized quite a lot in the media in the F1 world.

During the opening race of the 2018-season, Verstappen damaged his car early-doors and spun around, which made him end up behind the Haas of Kevin Magnussen. The media all agreed that Verstappen rode the kerb too hard and had damaged his floor, but that wasn't the case.

"No, it didn't happen in that corner," the 21-year-old said in an exclusive interview with Ziggo Sport.

"At that moment I found that incredibly annoying, everybody supposedly knowing best how it happened. I damaged my car in turn five, a fin broke off on the right side. Everybody said that was because of the kerbs, I could get really annoyed with that."

One race weekend later in Bahrain, Verstappen again lost control over his car. This time in qualifying.

"That's hard to explain to the people. Last year we drove with one mapping and that felt very good, but we couldn't get that to work this past season and we had adjusted it. Normally, you progressively get more power, but at that point the battery suddenly went from 0 to 180 bhp and I spun.

"Nobody knew the full story behind this and then I always think - just keep your mouth shut."

His final and most costly crash came in Monaco in FP3, where he rammed his car in the wall after riding a kerb too hard, eventually resulting in him not being able to qualify despite Red Bull being heavy favourites at the venue. His teammate Daniel Ricciardo ended up getting pole position and the win.

"What happened in China [contact with Vettel which made them both spin] and in Monaco I can blame myself for."