Red Bull remains baffled by Max Verstappen's unscheduled pit stop.

Just weeks after Lewis Hamilton suggested that a 'higher force' didn't appear to want him to win the 2016 title, Max Verstappen heard voices telling him to pit at a time the youngster looked destined for a strong points finish.

Arriving at his pit it was clear the crew was totally unprepared indeed the tools and blankets were lying on the floor with not a mechanic in sight.

From out of nowhere, the crew rushed to service the Dutch driver, reacting brilliantly to the situation. However, shortly after the Red Bull ground to a halt with a transmission issue necessitating a Virtual Safety Car period that was to change the face of the race.

"The lap before I pitted I heard the words 'push hard', and that's what I did," he told reporters. "But then I thought that they might have said 'pit now'.

"Obviously it was a misunderstanding and very obviously my mistake!" he added. "I admit that all was not very clever. It was good that in the end it didn't make any difference."

"It is something totally unusual," said team boss Christian Horner. "He just arrived in the pitlane and said 'I am in the pitlane'.

"We are not very good at fitting tyres when we don't know the drivers are coming in," he continued. "It was a shame for him but ultimately it came to nothing because of the DNF."

Asked about the message Verstappen had heard, the Briton said: "He hadn't heard anything that lap, it was the previous lap. He had been told to push, which was basically to close the gap back up to Nico because we were going to try to have an undercut. It was even the lap before, and he had driven past the pits. So it sort of came from nowhere."

Ironically, in a move that will come as no surprise to anyone who has run an F1 related poll where a Verstappen is among the nominees, the youngster was voted Driver of the Day by fans on the official F1 website.

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READERS COMMENTS

1. Posted by -ape-, 25/10/2016 13:13

"Lewis and the two RedBull boys make the F1 show the others are so boring ZZzzzz"

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2. Posted by Mad Matt, 25/10/2016 12:42

"Perhaps you were watching a different race to me? Alonso was pretty feisty with Massa and Sainz, to give but one example.

Coming back to the first post: I thought at first that Max was at the very least inconsiderate in not pulling off in a more convenient place but he explained to Sky that the team told him to keep going and where to pull off. He also said the car got stuck in gear which iw why they couldn't clear it under yellows. "

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3. Posted by dutchcanuck, 25/10/2016 10:51

"As a reaction to jackois about this pretty poor effort he is talking about, I saw a boring race with just two spectacular overtaking actions and guess who made them....."

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4. Posted by jackois, 24/10/2016 17:01

"Pretty poor effort all round from him... the number of opportunities he had to pull off when he hit trouble..."

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Red Bull baffled by Verstappen pit stop

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