A difficult weekend in Singapore fueled the fire within Max Verstappen who set about proving it was an outlier for Red Bull.
Verstappen was only fifth in Marina Bay last week, the first time either he or his team-mate Sergio Perez have not claimed victory next year.
That performance coincided with the introduction of two technical directives, introduced in an effort to outlaw flexible bodywork designed to offer an aerodynamic performance.
At the time, some made the leap that Red Bull’s demise was related to the directives, rather than the unique requirements of the Singapore streets.
“We had a back weekend, of course, then people start talking about ‘ah, it’s all because of the technical directives’,” Verstappen said.
“I think they can go suck on an egg.
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“I was just very fired up to have a good weekend here and make sure we were strong.”
The truth is, the team is still at sea with what the root cause was, though suggest car set-up played a part.
But by the same token, the Red Bull has been weaker around street circuits – it was almost beaten in Monaco by Aston Martin – so the more difficult weekend was, to an extent, predictable.
What surprised was the extent to which the otherwise all-conquering Red Bull operation struggled for pace.
The team has largely dismissed the race as an isolated incident caused by a combination of a weaker circuit, car set-up missteps, and others capitalising.
How much, if any impact, technical directives had was therefore indecipherable.
Nonetheless, it gained traction and left Verstappen fired up heading into this weekend.
The Dutchman topped all three practice sessions and took pole by a comfortable 0.581s.
“The whole weekend has been really good,” Verstappen enthused.
“As soon as we put the car on the track, it’s been very enjoyable to drive, very predictable, which I think is the most important.
“Lap after lap in qualifying as well, it was getting better. I mean, I only had three new sets of tyres so I had to be careful with using them, basically.
“So in Q2 I had to run the scrubbed but then, once I put it on a new set again, in the first run in Q3, it was just super nice.”
Verstappen will be joined on the front row by Oscar Piastri, the Australian scoring the best qualifying result of his F1 career.
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