Four-time Formula 1 champion Max Verstappen has kept up his sharp criticism of the new F1 cars after a sudden Q1 crash in a Mercedes-dominated opening qualifying of the season.

Verstappen was sent into the wall by an apparent technical problem when kicking off a flying lap at Turn 1, and got his wrists jolted by the steering wheel in the impact with the barrier. 

He had scans carried out in the medical centre in the aftermath and was given the all-clear.

Verstappen then cut a particularly unimpressed figure when talking to the media about what he saw in F1's first qualifying of this rules era - which he alluded to as being fundamentally broken.

Asked over a reported barrage of criticism from him towards the current state of F1 in the drivers' briefing on Friday, Verstappen was distinctly unimpressed with that information leaking.

"It's a bit weird that, you know! Drivers shouldn't be speaking," he lamented.

"Yeah, that's not very professional, I find, from the people involved."

But he made no attempt to sugarcoat his feelings about 2026.

"I said how I thought about it. I mean, I'm definitely not having fun at all with these cars. 

"I don't know, you can make up your mind - but I think if you look at the onboard, you see enough, right?"

F1 is open to tweaking the formula in-season by adjusting harvesting and deployment allowances, but Verstappen is convinced "there is nothing that you can do" to really improve things in the short term.

"You can only make it slower and then of course you get a bit more of a normal speed trace - but it's a slower speed trace," he said.

"The formula is just not correct. And that is something that is a bit harder to change. But I think we need to."

The crash and wrist injury scare will have contributed, but a general sense of deep disdain was seeping into almost every answer from Verstappen, including those not directly relating to the current formula.

On the crash, he said: "I mean, I just hit the pedal and the whole rear axle just completely locked. Which, especially with these F1 cars, [is] very weird, I mean I've never experienced that in my whole life."

He didn't see the performance of the package on the Red Bull power unit's debut as particularly positive, saying: "Well, I mean, the gap is eight tenths to P1. So that's still a very big gap.

"And we know that we have to improve the car and engine to fight Mercedes, because at the end of the day we're not here to be P3-4-5-6-whatever. We're here to win. Step by step hopefully we can get closer."

And in terms of Mercedes' qualifying dominance, Verstappen pointed out "that's what I said already in Bahrain".

"So for me that's not a surprise."

He also said later: "It's going to be a long season. That's what I'm telling you."