Max Verstappen declared: "I'm not happy," as he criticised his Red Bull team after the Saudi Arabian Grand Prix.
The Dutchman finished second behind his team-mate Sergio Perez. It was a good result for Verstappen, who retained his championship lead by taking the fastest lap of the race and making it up to the podium places despite starting 15th on the grid.
That had happened because of a mechanical issue in qualifying which left him unable to set a representative time in Q2. And that was Verstappen's focus as he faced the press after Sunday's race, as he publicly criticised his team for his lack of car reliability.
He told reporters: "It's not only about the pace of the car, we need to make sure we are reliable without any issues. My first weekend was not very clean because of just the big balance shift from testing to the race weekend, some other things which were going on in the background.
"Now again, after three positive practice sessions, I have an issue in qualifying. Of course, I recovered to second which is good. In general the whole feeling in the team, everyone is happy – but personally I'm not happy because I'm not here to be second.
"Especially when you are working very hard back at the factory, to make sure you arrive here in a good state, and making sure everything is spot on. Then you have to do the recovery race.
"I don't mind doing it, but when you are fighting for a championship, when it looks like it's just between two cars, you have to make sure those two cars are reliable. We have to do better, absolutely. Just to have a cleaner weekend, I think that would be nice."
Verstappen is one point ahead of Perez in the overall standings after the first two races of the year. As he alluded to, they look to be the only ones mounting a serious title challenge this year with the Red Bull cars in a league of their own on the grid in the early stages of this season.
"Realistically, with or without the safety car, I think P2 was the highest possible," Verstappen admitted when reflecting on his race. "Then the pace was good. The safety car helped me a bit to get back in the race. But even with that, in the restart, you just lose too much time to Checo. So once I got into P2, it was quite a decent gap, let's say, on a track where there's not a lot of [tyre degradation]."
