Max Verstappen: The battery didn't have enough charge for the overtake.

      Max Verstappen finished eighth at the Japanese Grand Prix, unable to overtake Pierre Gasly. The Red Bull Racing driver stated that he lacked battery charge on the straight to get ahead of the Alpine driver. Isaac Hajar did not score points and finished twelfth.

      Max Verstappen (8th): “In the race, I tried everything to gain positions and earn points. I started better than before, maximized the race, and moved up a few positions. I tried to overtake Alpine, but Pierre was doing great and made no mistakes. Unfortunately, it turned out to be too difficult to pass him.

      When I tried to overtake on the main straight, the battery lacked charge. I was waiting for him to make at least a small mistake, but Pierre did everything right and didn’t give me a chance to overtake. Considering all the issues this weekend, we still earned points, but these are not the positions we want to fight for.

      There’s a whole month ahead to analyze everything, sort out the car, and come back more competitive. It’s important to find the rhythm, understand the car's characteristics, and the engine modes. Everyone in the team is working hard. We will be able to achieve a lot in the coming weeks.”

      Isaac Hajar (12th): “Today’s race felt very long. I had a good start and completed a solid first lap. The plan was to fight with Pierre, and I was doing that until I lost almost all battery charge on the back straight. We need to improve how the car uses energy, as we had issues with that today.

      The safety car came out at an inconvenient time for me, and after that, it was difficult to get back into the points. I fought well with the Audi drivers, but I didn’t have the speed to overtake them.

      Everyone in the team is working hard to understand the reasons for the problems. We now have time until the Miami race to get back into the fight for higher positions.”

      Laurent Mekies, team principal: “Today we learned more about the limitations of our car. It was important to fight and for Max and Isaac to complete the full race distance to gather information. It’s clear that we have a lot of work ahead, but there are several weeks to try to solve these issues.

      At the moment, it’s important to work on closing the gap to the competitors ahead. There isn’t a specific area we can point to as the reason for our deficit, so we need to work in all areas.

      Right now, things don’t look great, but I have complete confidence in the team. During the break, we will thoroughly analyze the data and work on the simulator. We won’t solve all the problems by the next race, but the team will do a lot of work to get to the bottom of it.

      I am fully confident that thanks to the efforts of everyone in Milton Keynes, we will make the most of the upcoming weeks to achieve improvements for the Miami race.”