Red Bull apologise to Max Verstappen over shocking qualifying gap

Red Bull team principal Laurent Mekies has issued an apology to Max Verstappen following a sprint qualifying performance for the Chinese Grand Prix labelled by the four-time F1 champion as "a disaster".

Verstappen finished a staggering 1.7s off the pace of pole-sitter George Russell in his Mercedes as Red Bull struggled for pace and performance at the faster Shanghai International Circuit compared to Melbourne's Albert Park last week in Australia.

The Dutch driver, who will start eighth, bemoaned the fact he had "no grip, no balance" with his RB22, and was "losing massive amounts of time in the corners", in particular.

At the end of the session, with Verstappen touring on his in-lap, Mekies took to the radio to apologise to his star driver.

"Sorry Max," he said. "Tough one. A lot to learn. Thankfully, the weekend is still long. We need to learn from it, so let's try again."

Expanding on the issues with the car, speaking to Viaplay, Mekies said: "It's been very difficult here from the very first laps.

"We couldn't get the car to work in its proper windows, and on top of that, we have been slowed down by quite a few issues, a lot of small issues which, added together, have taken us away from the performance we were hoping to have.

"The weekend is still long, but certainly a lot of work to do."

As to whether the issues could be solved over the course of the weekend, he replied: "Time will tell.

"In terms of the gap to the competition, there is a big increase compared to only a few days ago in Melbourne.

"So it's something for us to understand what we are missing, how we can put things a bit more together and get more out of our package?"