Max Verstappen laments 'unacceptable' retirement as Charles Leclerc opens huge gap in standings

Max Verstappen could not hide his sheer disappointment and frustration at a second retirement in three races after having to pull his Red Bull car off of the circuit and out of the Australian Grand Prix on Sunday.

It is clear that the RB18 is a quick car – even if Ferrari seemed to have the measure on them this weekend – but it is also apparent that it does have some reliability issues and that, no matter how fast the car is, does not normally lead to a successful title challenge.

Of course, there’s still a long way to go but the reigning champ sits in P6 in the Drivers’ standings, three points behind Lewis Hamilton who has had a lot of issues with his Mercedes and a whopping 46 points off of Charles Leclerc who currently leads the way.

Indeed, when asked about the championship race he said he didn’t want to think about it, with it saying it’s ‘unacceptable’ to not be finishing races.

“We’re already miles behind, so I don’t even want to think about the championship fight at the moment. It’s more important to finish races.

“Today was in general just a bad day and not really having the pace, I was just managing my tyres to try to bring it to the end because it looked like quite an easy P2 and there was no point trying to fight Charles because I couldn’t put pressure on him.

“But we didn’t even finish the race, which is pretty frustrating and unacceptable.

“I knew there was a problem and it was always going to be a case of trying to finish the race. But these kind of things, if you want to fight for the title, cannot happen.”