A 150bhp surge in power caused Max Verstappen’s crash in Q1 while his team was trying to investigate an engine problem, the Red Bull driver has revealed.

Verstappen’s qualifying session ended when he spun into the barriers at turn two. The Red Bull driver revealed he had a series of power delivery problems during the weekend including poor drive-ability and a shortfall in top speed. He was heard describing the latter on his team radio during practice yesterday.

His Q1 crash occured after he had already set a time quick enough to get into Q2. Verstappen explained he was “doing an extra lap to calibrate everything because every time I was in that set of faster modes I had a problem – I was three, four tenths slower than what it should be. In the third practice I was second but I lost four-tenths from the engine not having the power.

“[In qualifying] it was not as much as in the practice but there was still problems in the straight, it was not the deployment I wanted. So the team told me to do another lap to try and calibrate it better. Clearly I couldn’t finish the lap.”

He described how he was caught out by a spike in power delivery during his extra lap.

“Turn two is, especially in Q1, not flat. It’s 95% throttle. Somehow from one to the other lap I got 150 horsepower extra on the rear tyres. It kicked in and over-slipped the rear tyres and made me spin.”

“It was the same line, same throttle,” he added, “you can see the speed trace it’s exactly the same and suddenly you can see the 150 horsepower kicking in and a lot more wheelspin.”

The Red Bull driver said he consulted the data from the crash immediately afterwards as it came as a “big surprise.”

“It’s never happened to me before in my career, something like that. Of course I’ve had crashes in qualifying but that’s like going off the track, out-braking yourself.”

The crash means Verstappen is set to start 15th on the grid. “Of course I was disappointed to crash the car but more so because I knew we had a great race car,” he said. “Not necessarily in qualifying but in the race we would definitely have been very strong.”

“Of course when you can start in the first two rows then you know you make it a lot easier. I’m still confident we can have a good race.”

2018 F1 season