Max Verstappen says his “incredibly messy” practice prevented Miami pole position

Max Verstappen feels he could have been a shoo-in for pole position in Miami had his weekend gone more smoothly in practice.

The World Champion only managed five flying laps in the first two practice sessions on Friday, hampering the process of him learning the Miami International Autodrome layout – with a brake fire eliminating him from FP2 entirely.

He did his best to redress the balance in FP3 on Saturday, but still headed into qualifying on the back foot from his point of view.

The Red Bull driver still managed to narrowly beat his team-mate Sergio Perez though, with the pair set to line up alongside each other on the second row on Sunday.

But he felt if things had been more serene, a P1 start was more than likely.

“I think it’s more that if we had a clean weekend, we would have been on pole,” Verstappen told Formula1.com when asked if he would have taken pole without his Q3 mistake.

Max did well to avoid the wall here 😳#MiamiGP 🇺🇸 #F1pic.twitter.com/MGH4g0zyWr

— PlanetF1 (@Planet_F1) May 7, 2022

“Because you cannot afford on a new track like this to have a weekend like we’ve had. To only do four or five laps on a Friday, we could of course sweet-talk it but it’s extremely painful.”

Those strong words were added to by the Dutchman as he lamented his lack of track time in Miami, saying getting a “rhythm” on a circuit such as this is even more important than usual – and that he and Red Bull had “failed” to do so.

“It’s been an incredibly messy weekend and we just make it super-difficult for ourselves,” the Red Bull driver told reporters.

“[Ran] four or five laps yesterday, then you start today still learning the track, trying to find the right set-up as there wasn’t much data.

“I’m of course still pleased to be third, close to the guys in front, but I think we can do so much better by operating cleaner and smoother.

“You cannot afford it on a new track like this, or a street track, as it’s critical to do…