"Not a good race for us," admits four-time world champion after losing out to Charles Leclerc.

Though at one point it appeared he would be challenging Kimi Antonelli for the win, just eight laps from the end a clearly struggling Max Verstappen was overhauled by a charging Charles Leclerc, and, but for a late VSC might well have been passed by Lewis Hamilton also.

"Pretty frustrating, to be honest," admitted the Dutchman in the aftermath of the race. "Just not a really good race for us.

"In hindsight, of course, it's very easy to say," he continued, "but for whatever reason, the softer compounds today were not really working that well. Then also I think the way that we used our tyres in the order was wrong.

"Plus, I think at one point it was quite clear that the people on the harder compounds were finding a lot of grip, so I guess we also didn't really react to that. Just probably sticking too much to our belief from the last two races, where the softer compounds were the fastest, and clearly here that didn't work.

"Besides that, too many issues with the power unit, where it was just very inconsistent behaviour around the corners, every lap, every corner, different behaviour. So, you can't build up a rhythm, you can't build any kind of consistency in the car.

"I had a slow pit stop also," he sighed, "so too many things today that just didn't go well."

Ahead of the start it was anticipated that the Dutchman would get the better of Antonelli in Turn 1, however an unspecified power issue saw him sluggishly pull away from the grid and continue to struggle for much of the opening lap. Indeed rather than getting the better of the Mercedes driver he was passed by Leclerc, but managed to retake the position once power had been 'restored'.

While Antonelli had started on the mediums, like most Verstappen had opted for softs, and opted to fir another set of the red-banded rubber when he pitted on Lap 13, finally switching to hards on Lap 31.

"We are not the fastest in high speed, we're not the fastest in low speed," he said of the RB22, which, until yesterday, many saw as the new pace-setter, "and I think maybe here you either need to be very fast in high speed or you need to be the quickest in low speed. When you're none of it, you're just a little bit average, and I think we were just a little bit average in the race.

"Of course, if we chose different tyres, probably we could have maybe been second," he added, "but that's always easy to say afterwards. Plus, when you have too many issues with the consistency of your power unit, then that already costs you free lap time.

"So it's normal that you can't execute everything to the limit or at least be at your best. There are still a lot of things that we need to look at and do better."

Not for the first time, other than the multitude of issues with his car, tyres and strategy, the Dutchman was unhappy with his radio, after failing to understand some of the communications he was receiving.

"It's not the second time," he insisted. "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," he added. "It's a disaster. Yeah, it's a disaster. It's really frustrating, to be honest."

Teammate, Isack Hadjar experienced a similar issue.

"Honestly, for me it's the first time it's happening the whole year and I can tell you it's not nice," he said. "I can't hear anything. I just hear some kind of box, box and then I box. I almost pitted at the wrong time once."

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