Max Verstappen shows true colours with Yuki Tsunoda comment as Red Bull star finishes last

declared that "is no pancake" and defended his Red Bull team-mate after the Japanese driver finished Spanish Grand Prix qualifying in last place. Verstappen will begin Sunday's race from third, behind Lando Norris and polesitter , though his colleague has an uphill battle to record any points in Barcelona.

, claiming that he had a "clean lap" over the team radio, but his struggles continued in the second Red Bull seat. He was a quarter of a second shy of the cut-off mark for Q2 and around half a second down on the time that Verstappen set, which was good enough for second place.

But Verstappen has lept to the defence of Tsunoda, insisting that concerns with the RB21 have long been in place before the Japanese driver was promoted to replace .

"Yuki is no pancake," Verstappen said. "This (issue with the second driver) has, of course, been going on for a long time. Maybe that's a sign too. Of what? You can fill that in yourself."

Tsunoda was left chasing answers and could not believe he finished in 20th place, behind , who could not complete Q1 due to mechanical issues.

"Until the previous grand prix, especially Monaco, I was having good progress throughout," Tsunoda said. "[In the] last Grand Prix, [in] some sessions I was matching or a bit faster than Max and suddenly it drops like hell.

"Whatever I do [nothing changes]. Every lap - even long run was a good example. Just whatever I do, nothing happens and it feels like this car is eating the tyres like hell, having degradation massively. It doesn't really stack up. I think the core limitation is still there and I don't know what it is and I can't really have any answer for that."

During Q1, Tsunoda asked to check for any damage on the floor as he went in search of an explanation for the slow drive. However, he shut down the idea that a damaged car was the reason for any underperformance.

"I rode slightly more aggressively after the last corner, but I didn't go really crazy at all," he added. "I didn't accept the level and saw multiple cars going there. So it's not like I damaged the car.

"I'll try my best tomorrow. What I can do to be in top 10, I'll do. But the thing is I don't think we were able to cure the core limitation since F2, which was like really lap by lap just tyres degrading. So in that sense it will be tough realistically.

"But hopefully with a couple of set up changes we'll make it a little bit better. Other than that let's see how it goes."

Tsunoda could take a pitlane start and bring the car out of parc ferme rules to complete major changes, but that would first require the team to identify what the problem is.