“I blocked Nico Rosberg”: Fans blame the former F1 champion for 'cursing' Max Verstappen and Red Bull’s form

Several F1 fans were really annoyed at former world champion Nico Rosberg and blamed him for cursing Max Verstappen at the 2023 Hungarian GP qualifying.

The Red Bull driver missed out on pole position by a deficit of 0.003 seconds to his rival Lewis Hamilton on Saturday. The Dutchman never really looked comfortable in his RB19 for probably the first time this year as he was having handling issues throughout the day.

But many F1 fans put all the blame on the 2016 world champion as he had clicked a picture of Max Verstappen's car outside of his garage ahead of this weekend and put a 'curse' on him. The 'Nico Rosberg Curse' has become quite a thing on social media and works when the German picks someone to support and they end up losing.

Several fans took to social media to give their opinion on the qualifying, with one even claiming that he blocked the former Mercedes driver.

"Max didn’t qualify p1 so i blocked nico rosberg," the fan wrote.

Here are some more reactions:

Max Verstappen reviews the 2023 Hungarian GP qualifying session

Max Verstappen stated that he struggled throughout the qualifying and didn't expect it to pan out the way it did.

The Dutchman said at the post-quali press conference:

"Terrible! I mean, it doesn't matter where you are on the grid. If it doesn't feel good, it doesn't feel good. And the whole qualifying I've been struggling a lot. Well, the whole weekend really, with a shift in balance, with understeer and you try to correct it and it's oversteer, and it was just never in a good window. So I was struggling a lot in Q1, Q2. I mean, there's not much you can do really once you go into Qualifying. But yeah, every time I got to the apex of the corner, it was just not gripping up for me.

"And that's probably the worst balance I can have in a car. And yeah, I tried to correct a few things in Q3, but there's only so much you can do and I thought my first lap wasn’t too bad but it still felt like I was driving on ice, with the front axle. Just very peaky. It was just hit and miss all the time. So, I think with the upgrades we brought as well to this weekend, it is extremely disappointing from our side. I mean, we're P2 but you know, looking at how the whole year has been, this, I didn't expect to happen.

It will be interesting to see if Max Verstappen faces the same issue in the main race as well.