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Red Bull may have got “sloppy” with their work on Max Verstappen’s car, leading to his Australian Grand Prix retirement says Marc Surer.

Verstappen suddenly pulled over to the side of the Melbourne circuit on lap 39 while chasing leader Charles Leclerc, saying he could “smell weird fluid” and that the car was “*****ing itself”.

His race over with a fuelling problem, it was the second time in three grands prix this season that the reigning World Champion had failed to finish as a breakdown also cost him a certain second place in Bahrain.

In between, the Dutchman had shown the RB18’s potential by inflicting Leclerc’s only dropped points of the campaign in Saudi Arabia, beating his Ferrari rival by half a second.

With the two DNFs, Verstappen is only sixth in the Drivers’ standings, already a massive 46 adrift of runaway leader Leclerc.

Former F1 driver and now pundit Surer does not think a successful title defence is beyond Verstappen already, but suspects his cause might not have been helped by how his car was put together in Australia.

“With 23 races, it’s actually not that much,” said the 70-year-old Swiss about the 46-point gap during a video interview for formel1.de.

“It sounds like a lot, it makes a bad impression, but on