Max Verstappen described his hard-earned P2 finish at the Formula 1 Hungarian Grand Prix as “incredible” after the frantic race.
The four-time World Champion previously reported aerodynamic issues, shift struggles, and rear-wing troubles across recent races, and these issues have led Verstappen and Red Bull to struggle to match the pace of Mercedes, Ferrari, and McLaren this season.
Despite this, the season appears to be brightening for Verstappen as he has delivered several splendid performances, including at the Hungaroring.
Delivering an ‘overperformance’ in Hungary
While the Dutchman was supposed to start from sixth on the grid, grid penalties handed to both Lewis Hamilton and Andrea Kimi Antonelli promoted the Red Bull driver to P4. With a solid start, Verstappen made his way into third, already having overtaken Charles Leclerc.
From then on, Verstappen got his elbows out and defended his position hard throughout the race. Hard battles were fought, especially with Hamilton as Verstappen continued to fight his way to P2. With Oscar Piastri retiring from the race, it elevated Verstappen further up the order.
Reflecting on the difficulty of achieving the incredible result, Verstappen said: “Yeah, I mean I was still struggling with the same things as yesterday. So the car was just extremely oversteery, just dragging quite hard at one point as well, but I do think that, in the start, moving forward was, of course, making our first stint possible.
“Then of course, we got undercut, but then I made the move on Lewis, which then, I think, made my second stint a little bit more straightforward and then the team also put me onto the Soft.
“Initially, I was like ‘that’s going to be a long one to the end’, but we made it work. So yeah, overall I still don’t really understand how we are second, but I think as a team we performed strongly.
“So yeah, I see it as a bit of like overperformance to what we expected. I guess that’s of course a good thing considering how everything felt, and I saw also when I jumped out of the car again there was damage on the car for whatever reason, so it’s not- yeah, it was not made easy for us.”
‘Incredible result’ despite issues
Saturday’s qualifying session saw the Red Bull driver once again report issues with his RB22. While he followed it up with a great performance in the race, Verstappen admitted that he still experienced the same issues as the day before.
“No, it was exactly the same. There’s nothing that you can change anyway, you know, after qualifying. So I knew that it was going to be tough, and it was very tough, honestly,” he revealed.
“I think one of the hardest races of this year in terms of how I felt in the car, how I had to manage the balance as well corner to corner. So yeah, to be on the podium I think was an incredible result for us.”
With the incredible drive taking him to the podium, it became his 131st on the steps. Red Bull appear to be working hard to make sure the fight for podiums and wins continues.
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