Max Verstappen could have secured pole position at the Singapore GP last weekend. However, a fuel-level blunder by Red Bull led to the Dutchman having to cancel his last flying lap in Q3 and return to the pits.
Verstappen expressed his disappointment with the Austrian team at the Japanese GP drivers’ press conference. He told the media, including Sportskeeda:
“It’s not rocket science. I mean just pay attention to the fuel level. So there is not much to really change. When you fuel the car for five laps, you can do five laps, you’re not going to be able to do six laps.”
Max Verstappen was on course to score pole position when he was told to abort the lap at the last moment. Red Bull made the call because they believed the 25-year-old would be short of the one liter of fuel required for inspection.
A messy and frustrating weekend for me that ended in P7 today. This is not where we want to be, but we move on to Japan 
I’m looking forward to race on the great track in Suzuka, next week 
Congrats to @SChecoPerez on the win today, a very strong performance 
https: //t.co/hK2aTD06hi
Verstappen criticized his team for not paying attention to the amount of fuel put in the car. Hey said:
“We had a very poor Friday in terms of amount of laps so also there, I think a few things went wrong because when we made changes to the car we couldn’t really test of course, because it was wet. Carried that on into the race. So yeah, just very messy weekend and I think that was just a prime example of how you don’t want a weekend to go.”
Verstappen also clarified that Red Bull do not need to change anything because of what happened in the last race. He simply asked the team to learn from their mistakes:
“So you learn from that. But there’s nothing like it suddenly needs to change in the team. We all know that it was a bad weekend but we also have shown this year that we’ve had a lot of very good weekends, so we know how to do it.”
Max Verstappen looks to close out the championship at Suzuka
Max Verstappen will look to win the championship in Japan this weekend after failing to do so in Singapore last week. A poor finish in Singapore and a strong performance by his closest competitors meant the Dutchman had to extend the celebrations for another week.
Japan will be hosting an F1 race for the first time since 2019. Mercedes won the last iteration of the race, with Lewis Hamilton setting the fastest lap and Valterri Bottas winning the race after starting third on the grid.
A win with the fastest lap in Japan will be enough for Max Verstappen to be crowned world champion 
If he fails to win then Max will have to score a minimum of 8⃣ more points than Leclerc and 6⃣ more than Perez to be crowned champion! 
#F1 #JapaneseGP #MaxVerstappen https://t.co/TUHu5pdK0f
Max Verstappen had a DNF in the race after a tangle with Charles Leclerc rendered his car unable to race. He will be hoping to finish strong this week and clinch his second world championship with Red Bull.
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Edited by Rachel Syiemlieh
