Despite racing from 21st on the grid to second at the checkered flag, Max Verstappen said he is convinced more was possible at the São Paulo Grand Prix had his Red Bull not been "a disaster to drive."
The four-time champion was voted driver of the day at Interlagos after he mastered the wet conditions to overcome a grid penalty, cut through the field and finish on the podium behind race winner Lando Norris.
Verstappen made up the vast majority of his positions in the first stint of the race but reported a loss in rear grip after he switched tires at his first pit stop.
Initially it was unclear if the loss of balance was related to the changing conditions as the track dried, but after the race he was convinced the car had some sort of issue.
"My God," he said over team radio on the cooldown lap. "Doing 85% of the race with a f---ed car.
"Of course, P2 is nice but not in this way. I'm sorry, but what a disaster to drive. I've never experienced something like this in the wet or in the dry. It's really, really bad."
Verstappen started from 21st on the grid after Red Bull elected to replace his power unit ahead of qualifying, incurring a 30-place grid penalty.
Speaking in the postrace news conference, the Dutch driver said the early part of the race had been good fun, but lamented the loss in performance after his pit stop.
"When you start that far back, you need to try and, of course, to get by the guys ahead of you as quickly as you can," Verstappen said. "I do think that first stint went really, really well. We got very quickly back into the top 10.
"I think the pace wasn't bad, but as soon as I switched to the slicks, I had some extreme amount of oversteer in the car, in the high-speed corners, which made it super difficult to drive. We need to understand if something broke on the car, if there was some kind of error, loss or whatever, because this was not normal.
"I sit here, of course, very happy with second, but at the same time, I knew or I know there was more in it if the car would have been in good shape. Unfortunately, that was not the case. I actually did most of the race with a car that was not in good shape. To sit here being second, of course, is fantastic."
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It was the third year in a row that Verstappen has started toward the back of the grid due to an engine penalty.
"Maybe next year, I would love, of course, to start maybe a bit further up front instead of starting from the back or the pit lane," he said. "We'll find out next year. But it's been good. In the wet, it probably also gives you a few more opportunities to get by cars, and you can do some different lines and more opportunities.
"That definitely helped me today, but we also have to understand why or what went wrong with the car as soon as we went to the slick tires. Because even when I saw back to the inter tires, at the end, the car was night and day different to my first stint, which shows that there is something wrong."