Max Verstappen surprised by Red Bull’s progress
Seeing Max Verstappen qualify only fifth and finish more than three tenths away from pole position is unusual enough. What is perhaps even more surprising is hearing the four-time world champion express satisfaction with the result.
At the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya, where he famously claimed the first Formula 1 victory of his career ten years ago, Max Verstappen felt he could have achieved an even stronger result than fifth place. The Dutchman was fighting for a spot on the second row and was in contention with Andrea Kimi Antonelli for third position, but a lack of grip in the final sector ultimately prevented him from improving further.
After two very strong opening sectors, Max Verstappen lost valuable grip in the final part of the lap, most likely due to overheating of the soft tyres. The resulting loss of performance cost him crucial hundredths of a second and left him fifth on the grid.
The Red Bull driver also believes the interruption caused by Charles Leclerc’s crash and the subsequent red flag may have worked against him: “I think it was a decent qualifying session for us. It’s just a shame what happened on the final Q3 lap. I wasn’t able to put the final sector together. From Turn 10 onwards I simply didn’t have the grip I needed. Unfortunately, that cost us third place today,” Max Verstappen explained.
The impact of the red flag
According to Max Verstappen, the lengthy interruption between his two Q3 attempts may also have played a role.
“Almost all the other drivers in Q3 went back out after the red flag because they hadn’t really completed a proper flying lap. I was missing a bit of rhythm in Q3, and when you have that rhythm it usually helps.”
“Normally you go out, complete the lap, come back in, add some fuel and then head out again for the second and final attempt. Oscar and I were among the first drivers to set a time in Q3, so we ended up waiting around ten minutes between one flying lap and the next. Unfortunately, that didn’t really help us.”
A surprisingly small gap to the frontrunners
Although fifth place was not the result Max Verstappen had hoped for, the final gap to George Russell’s pole-winning Mercedes came as a positive surprise.
After the first three practice sessions, Red Bull appeared to be much further away from the pace. Between FP3 and qualifying, the Milton Keynes-based team made several adjustments to the RB22, but nothing particularly dramatic.
Despite that, the final result showed Max Verstappen only 0.342 seconds behind pole position, a figure that even he struggled to explain: “We’re still three and a half tenths behind, which is too much,” Max Verstappen told Motorsport.com. “But it was definitely better than in practice. The strange thing is that we don’t really know what happened or why it happened.”
“Of course we made some changes to the car, but we didn’t completely overhaul the setup or anything like that. So I don’t really understand how we managed to halve the gap to the frontrunners.”
Still work to do for Red Bull
Despite the encouraging improvement, Max Verstappen remains realistic about Red Bull’s current situation.
“We’ve already seen the real picture. We can clearly see where our weaknesses are, so we need to keep working. There isn’t one specific corner where we’re losing time, and it’s not only in the high-speed sections. It’s a collection of small things that are costing us tenths,” he concluded.
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