Verstappen at a loss after car performance ‘just fell apart’

Max Verstappen says he has low expectations for the Austrian Grand Prix after his car’s performance went away from him and he qualified seventh.

Red Bull came into its home race with hopes of challenging near the front, as it brought an upgrade and has traditionally gone well on its home circuit. After appearing to be a step behind McLaren throughout practice but still within striking distance, Verstappen was then unable to put together clean laps as he complained of a lack of grip in qualifying and ended up seventh on the grid.

“I think yesterday already was not good over one lap, the long run wasn’t good and today FP3 was a little bit more positive but still off,” Verstappen said. “Then in qualifying basically everything felt bad. Every corner was a struggle; I just didn’t have the balance. It was either understeer or oversteer. Even every single lap that I did I had a bit of a different behavior from the car so that’s not ideal.

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“I don’t want to talk about the upgrades because I think it was not only the upgrades that caused all this. Just suddenly we really took a step back, which is not what you want from FP3 into quali.

“We didn’t touch the car…. Just very tiny little changes that shouldn’t influence the car balance. That’s all manageable but suddenly with the higher track temps and more wind, it just fell apart.”

Given how the car was handling and the parc ferme regulations restricting changes to the setup, Verstappen believes he’s in for a tough afternoon on Sunday.

“Not a lot [is expected]. Not to fight up front, for sure. The hotter conditions don’t help as well. So far this year we’ve not been more competitive in the race than qualifying as well. We’ll see what we can do tomorrow.

“I didn’t expect it to be this bad in qualifying but I think no one did in the team. So that’s something we have to analyze.”