Max Verstappen claims he has lost count of how many times Red Bull's radio system has failed him this season after yet another communication breakdown during the United States Grand Prix.
Verstappen finished third at Circuit of the Americas, behind race winner Kimi Antonelli and Charles Leclerc, but was left fuming at a recurring problem that has dogged his car on multiple occasions in 2026.
Asked how frustrating it was to suffer another radio dropout, and that it was not the first time this year, Verstappen did not hold back.
"It's not the second time," said Verstappen, speaking to the media, including RacingNews365. "It's already, I don't know how many times this year.
"Maybe we should just start communicating in sign language. It's probably cheaper as well.
"It's a disaster. Yeah, it's a disaster. It's really frustrating, to be honest."
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Verstappen - 'Hurts your performance'
Verstappen's frustration was not limited to the communication issues. The four-time F1 champion also pointed to strategic errors and a slow pit stop that cost him time in his battle for the podium places.
Notably, Red Bull deployed a two-stop strategy for the race, running soft-soft-medium, which Verstappen has claimed was "not agreed" beforehand.
Asked whether more was possible from the car given the problems, Verstappen said Red Bull had failed to extract the maximum from the weekend.
"Today we didn't maximise much," said Verstappen.
"The issues, of course, don't help, but I think also the strategy that we did with the tyre choices that we made, they were just not good.
"So that's a few things to analyse: why these tyres didn't work as we expected, or why the other tyres performed better than expected. So something to learn from.
"And then, the slow pit stop doesn't help as well. It's just seconds that you throw away, right? When you're fighting a close battle for second, that hurts your performance.
"Normally we're very good at these things, but today we weren't."
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