Max Verstappen downbeat after tough Hungary Qualifying
Max Verstappen qualified sixth for the Hungarian Grand Prix after a spin on his final Q3 run left him calling Red Bull’s pace a “joke.” The four-time champion said his RB22 kept getting worse lap by lap through car degradation, not tyre wear, leaving the car “completely undriveable.”
Key Takeaways
- Max Verstappen starts sixth in Hungary after spinning at the final corner on his last Q3 attempt.
- He said the RB22 suffered “car degradation,” becoming more oversteery and “completely broken” aerodynamically.
- Verstappen was about five tenths off Lando Norris’ pole, with both McLarens, both Ferraris, and Kimi Antonelli ahead.
- Team-mate Isack Hadjar qualified eighth and called the weekend one of Red Bull’s worst so far.
Why was Max Verstappen so downbeat after Qualifying?
Saturday at the Hungaroring was a comedown after a decent Friday, when Verstappen finished second and fourth in the practice sessions. By Qualifying, he said he still could not find good balance in the Red Bull.
“I mean, the whole weekend’s been tough but in Qualifying especially, the car is just degrading – we don’t have tyre deg, we have car degradation,” he told Formula 1.
“I really can’t make anything out of it – it’s just really, really tough. The car suddenly just started oversteering a lot. Honestly every lap that I did in Qualifying just was worse and worse, so it’s not good.”
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What did Verstappen say on team radio?
After spinning at the final corner on his last Q3 run, Verstappen’s frustration went out live on the world feed. He told race engineer Gianpiero Lambiase the car was “completely broken aerodynamically” and “getting worse and worse,” branding the session “a joke” and a “s**t weekend.”
On the in-lap he added that “massive degradations in qualifying” had left the car “completely undriveable.” Speaking later, he said the rear felt “non-existent” on turn-in and that the car became “uncontrollable in some corners.”
He also noted the trend runs against usual Qualifying logic: the car normally improves as the track rubbers in, but his RB22 kept oversteering more with every lap. He said Red Bull can see an aero loss in the data and that different problems keep arising, which makes the issue harder to control.
Where does that leave Red Bull for the race?
Despite the drama, Verstappen was still only around half a second off Norris’ pole—broadly in line with his practice pace. George Russell was hampered by a water leak and yellow flags after Verstappen’s spin, which helped leave the Dutchman sixth rather than seventh.
“For tomorrow as well, we need to fix that, because the car is not driveable like this,” Verstappen said. Hadjar, eighth after his own Q2 spin, said Red Bull made “no progress” and called Hungary “probably one of our worst,” adding overtaking will be hard and he is “putting everything on lap one.”