Red Bull's race "completely destroyed" by poor start - Verstappen

Italian Grand Prix

Red Bull's race "completely destroyed" by poor start - Verstappen

Red Bull scored no points with Verstappen retiring and Albon 15th

Ewan Gale

Sunday 6 September 2020 18:51 Updated: 18:56

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Red Bull driver Max Verstappen conceded his poor start to the Italian Grand Prix "completely destroyed" his race, before retiring midway through with an unknown engine issue.

Verstappen was only fifth on the grid, but slid to eighth in the opening laps and got stuck in a stack of cars on the straights of Monza.

He dropped out of the top 10 after the pit stop phase under a safety car that was deployed to attend to Kevin Magnussen's parked Haas, losing further places when Charles Leclerc brought out red flags with an incident at Parabolica.

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Verstappen, who now looks to be out of contention for the drivers' championship, told Sky Sports F1 it was impossible to make any advancements whilst in the pack.

"The start was bad," he admitted.

"Then we got stuck in a DRS train and you cannot pass. You are just following. That was all going well but the start completely destroyed our race. From there onwards, there was a red flag and then we had a problem on the engine so I don't know what exactly yet but we had to retire the car."

Team-mate Alex Albon suffered another disappointing race weekend, finishing only ahead of Antonio Giovinazzi in 15th.

Albon made contact with eventual race winner Pierre Gasly at turn one to drop out of the top 10, before being handed a five-second penalty for squeezing Romain Grosjean a few laps later.

The under pressure British-Thai driver revealed he had driven most of the race with damage to his car.

"Yeah, I don't how much but we were [carrying damage]," he said.

"I will check it out with the guys because obviously, it was a long race for us. We didn't have any grip. We definitely had damage. I will see what the team has to say because it wasn't a fun race.

"It was a tough weekend for us as a team. Without the circumstances, it was always going to be tough but it was not a good day for us, a better day for Alpha Tauri so well done to them guys. We will put our heads down and focus on Mugello."

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