His teammate Sergio Perez also struggled, receiving a three-place grid penalty for impeding Haas’ Nico Hulkeneberg in qualifying, and finishing fifth overall in the race.
Rivals Ferrari celebrated a 1-2 finish with Lando Norris completing the podium positions in third.
Trouble ahead for Red Bull?
Verstappen’s DNF puts him only four points ahead of Leclerc in the drivers championship, with Ferrari also closing in on Red Bull in the constructors.
Ferrari team principal Fred Vasseur is confident they can now apply pressure to the world championship winning outfit, according to RacingNews365.
He said:
"That is a huge part of the results in your business. And I think we are building up the confidence in the last month, but it was already the case in the last part of the season last year.
"And this weekend, I think it's good evidence that when we are putting everything together, and I'm not sure that we'll be able to do to do it every single weekend, but when we're putting everything together, we can put them a little bit under pressure.
"And it's when they are under pressure that they will make mistakes, that means that we have to continue in this direction."
"We are much, much more confident in the fact that we can manage these kinds of events because from lap one day one, we were there with the performance and it was quite smooth.
"So it's in this situation that we are going to have the best car for the Sunday."
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