‘The car is completely undriveable’ - Verstappen struggles to make a mark in China

Max Verstappen says the handling woes in his Red Bull mean “every lap is like survival” after qualifying eighth for the Chinese Grand Prix.

Red Bull looked strong early in pre-season but was fighting with McLaren to be the third-fastest team in Australia, well adrift of Mercedes and Ferrari. In China, Verstappen has had even less competitive machinery, and after being outqualified by Pierre Gasly’s Alpine he says the car’s handling is extremely difficult.

“We changed a lot on the car and it made zero difference,” Verstappen said. “The whole weekend we’ve been off – the car is completely undriveable, I cannot even put a bit of a reference in. Every lap is like survival.

“A little bit, of course, [comes] from the engine side, but that's not probably the biggest side. We lose so much with the car at the moment around here. Plus also, I cannot push at all, because the car doesn't let me. So that's why also I don't really feel in control of the car. It's just really not how it should be.

“From lap one of this new regulation, I've not enjoyed this car, for sure … Everything [is a problem] at the moment, oversteer and understeer.”

While Verstappen stated it will not be a fun race for him as he can’t realistically aim any higher than seventh position, he is hopeful a start line issue from the Sprint will not repeat itself after he lost a number of positions on Saturday morning.

“Honestly, I didn't even ask [what went wrong],” he said. “They said they would fix it, so I hope that that will be fixed for tomorrow. It helps a bit to stay in position, instead of starting the race from P20. Realistically, that's where we are fighting anyway, P7, P8.

“We are where we should be, and that’s probably also where we will be racing tomorrow.”

Teammate Isack Hadjar will start one place behind Verstappen in ninth, and says he had similar feelings as Red Bull tries to understand where its issues are coming from.

“Honestly, no regrets,” Hadjar said. “I did everything I could, put a good lap in, but I’m just not very happy with the balance and I was just a bit slow compared to the cars around. It’s not where we want to be as a team but we’ll just fight and understand.

“There’s been a lot of work to turn things around compared to yesterday. We are so far away from the lead that we are trying things and it’s still not really working, but at least we’ll try and understand.”