Max Verstappen has lamented Red Bull’s performance during qualifying for the Formula 1 Hungarian Grand Prix, pinpointing the cause of his lack of competitiveness.
Verstappen and Red Bull showed glimpses of pace during final practice and the early stages of qualifying, fuelling hopes of a positive result.
This ambition was extinguished in the closing seconds of Q3, when Verstappen suffered an uncharacteristic spin at the final corner, bringing out double-waved yellow flags.
A victim of the lack of grip persisting at the Hungaroring and the rapid tyre degradation across the lap, Verstappen struggled to improve on his final run, as did most of the top ten.
After qualifying, Verstappen reflected on the challenges he faced, critical of the performance of his RB22.
“Well the weekend in general has been difficult but when instead of the tyres degrading, your car is degrading, then you have a big problem,” he said to media. “So that’s what’s happening.”
The car just kept getting worse and worse lap after lap, so the more laps I did it was just more and more difficult to put a lap together.
“For tomorrow as well we need to fix that because the car is not drivable like this. As you could see in the final corner, I mean just turning the car is like non-existent on the rear, so it’s really crazy.”
“But let’s see where it’s coming from now because I always feel like it’s always like a different problem and that’s where we learn also how to control.”
Aero issues for Max Verstappen
Verstappen denied that the return of the rotating “Macerena” rear wing was to blame for his woes, also giving insight into the difficulties that led to his dramatic Q3 spin.
“Well, I first looked into the data myself and they could see loss in aero and it kept getting worse, so that’s not good”, he admitted.
“It normally gets better, the grip being put down, but my car just kept oversteering more and more, and I think I’m quite good at understanding when there is a problem or when I feel something is not right.
And the car just became uncontrollably in some corners and entry and the feeling that you have the car is just not sticking anymore.
“I felt it before, but this again, yeah, it’s not good.”
Verstappen will always call a situation for it is, positive or negative, and this is no different. The RB22 struggled badly around the tight, twisting nature of the Hungaroring.
The Dutchman’s spin demonstrates that he is driving the car at the absolute limit of adhesion, but on this occasion, the limit was exceeded. Both he and Red Bull face a long, challenging afternoon on Sunday, starting from sixth place.
Teammate Hadjar fared little better, unhappy with his car’s balance en-route to a distant eighth on the grid ahead of Sunday’s race.
Discussion about this post