Windsor saw Red Bull go in the wrong way: 'Verstappen needed another lap'

At the start of the sprint race in China, it is not Max Verstappen, but Lando Norris who will start from pole. Verstappen had to settle for P4 on the grid. According to Formula 1 analyst Peter Windsor, this is partly due to a wrong decision by Red Bull Racing.

According to Windsor, the key to success in the wet sprint qualifying lay in the number of laps driven in SQ3. Some drivers went out early, which gave them an advantage in warming up the Pirelli tyres. "I've got to give credit here to Lando and Fernando both for doing five laps, one lap more than most of their opposition on those intermediates," he said in his analysis on YouTube.

"Just getting in enough laps to make sure that as the track dried, which obviously it was getting quicker towards the end, that they were out there running. And that's one of the reasons Lando was so quick by such a margin on his last flying lap. So full credit to the organisation at McLaren for doing that," added the former Williams team manager.

"Whilst Lando was on a flyer going into one, Red Bull was still sort of puttering out of the pit lane going into Q3, a little bit slow, I think, and had Max had one more lap, maybe he would have done it as well because he was right there. Having said that, Max did complain at the end of Q3 of the engine cutting out a little bit on some parts of the lap, so maybe we should bring that in, maybe we shouldn't.," Windsor concluded.