452055 viewers assembled in Melbourne, expecting an enthralling Australian Grand Prix. And that is what they are getting. The defending World Champion Max Verstappen retired in Lap 3 of the race owing to a strange brake issue. There were signs of the RB20 failing in Lap 2 when Verstappen said on the radio, “I just lost the car, really weird.”

But the problems were confirmed in Lap 3 when smoke started emerging from the back of his car. “I have smoke… Fire, fire…. Brake… My brake,” exclaimed the Dutchman at the end of Lap 3. After 43 flawless races without an issue, his car finally buckled. In an interview after the incident, Verstappen explained the actual cause of the fire and the eventual retirement.

“What we can see so far from the data is that as soon as the lights went off the right-rear brake just stuck on,” Verstappen told Sky Sports. “It just caused the damage and it kept on increasing so it was also basically driving with the handbrake on. That’s why the car felt really weird to drive in some corners, just very snappy, while the laps to the grid the car was really spot on and I was happy with what we were doing. But if a brake is stuck on it doesn’t help.”

While this looks like a normal case of DNF, Verstappen had actually predicted this in a joke a day before the Melbourne practice sessions.

Max Verstappen’s ominous joke comes true at the Australian Grand Prix

Max Verstappen took place in a joint interview with VCARB’s Daniel Ricciardo on Thursday in Melbourne. The interviewer had a playful question up her sleeve, asking the Honey Badger about his perfect “date” with the Dutchman. While the Home Hero Ricciardo thought of taking him to the beach, Verstappen suggested they should go to the Aussie’s farm.

At that moment, Ricciardo had a vision, proposing that they should drive his dirt bikes. But the joker that Verstappen is, followed that with: “Then we’ll call Red Bull and we are like ‘We just had a shunt. We can’t do the next four races because Daniel’s collarbone is gone’.”

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That joke hasn’t aged well at all. Red Bull will hope to calm their Champion driver and solve the strange issue before their RB20 hits the tracks of Suzuka at the Japanese GP.