26/05/2018
NEWS STORY
In an incident uncannily similar to his mistake in 2016, Max Verstappen crashed during today's final practice session. Despite the best efforts of his crew who worked throughout the break repairing his car, the late discovery of gearbox damage meant the Dutchman was unable to take part in qualifying.
Meanwhile, similarly to 2016, teammate Daniel Ricciardo went on to take pole, recording the fastest ever lap of the Monaco track and beating Sebastian Vettel by 0.229s.
This morning's crash is the latest in a series of incidents this year, Verstappen finally appearing to get his act together with a podium finish in Barcelona.
However, speaking to Channel 4 following today's session, team boss Christian Horner made it clear that the youngster needs to raise his game.
"This place bites and he got bitten pretty hard today in a session that doesn't really count for anything, other than setting the car up," said the Briton.
"He's in a car that's capable of winning this grand prix and that will hurt him even more because you don't get that many opportunities to win a Monaco Grand Prix," he added.
"He needs to learn from it and stop making these errors. He knows that more than anybody and I would imagine that was a pretty painful qualifying for him watching what could have been.
Horner hopes that seeing teammate Ricciardo take pole so emphatically will have an impact of the Dutch driver.
"I don't know what else will," he said. "We've got a great car, he's a phenomenally fast driver and would have been able to be competing for pole today, and for the whole team to only be running one-legged with such a strong car is frustrating.
"But I have to compliment all the guys in the garage," he added, "we had both crews working hard to get him back out into that session but unfortunately this time it was not meant to be."
"Daniel's been on it all weekend," he said, referring to Ricciardo. "He's been quickest in every practice session, every qualifying session and he's delivered two great laps that were capable of pole so he's done an amazing job.
"It feels a little bittersweet," he admitted, "so delighted for the pole but we should have had two cars up there. It's a frustrating with such a fast car not to have both cars on the front two of the grid."
Check out our Saturday gallery from Monaco, here.