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Max Verstappen walked away from a Q3 shunt at the Red Bull Ring on Saturday uninjured but with questions his team can’t yet answer. A car that had behaved itself all weekend suddenly bit him twice on the same flying lap – and the four-time world champion wants to know why.
Speaking to Sky Sports after qualifying, Verstappen described the sequence that ended his session. “In that lap, on Turn 6, there was a big moment on entry. It is a bit weird as I have not had something like that all weekend.”
That was the warning. He didn’t heed it in time. “Then, in Turn 9, it was immediately gone. Not a small correction but full-lock off. That is a bit odd, so we will have a look.”
The RB22 found the barriers at Turn 9 in front of Red Bull’s home crowd, scattering gravel and bringing out double yellows through the final sector. The chaos that followed – George Russell completing a pole lap under those conditions, stewards initially noting a yellow flag infringement before clearing him entirely – somewhat overshadowed Verstappen’s situation. His earlier Q3 effort had clocked a 1m06.475s, placing him third at that stage of the session. Ultimately, the accident left him fifth on the grid, with Russell, Charles Leclerc, Lewis Hamilton, and Kimi Antonelli all ahead of him.
Fifth at a track where Verstappen had taken pole four years running, from 2021 through 2024, stings. He admitted the opportunity that slipped away. “It’s a shame as realistically we could have been P3. But getting off the line is hard for us so even P3 we might drop to P5.”
The qualifying session had already been trickier than it needed to be. In Q2, Red Bull left Verstappen in the garage deep into the session, calculating that his 1m07.183s would hold up – a decision partly driven by a desire to keep a fresh set of softs for Q3. The gamble nearly failed; he slid from seventh down to tenth before scraping through as cars around him couldn’t improve enough to bump him out.
On Sunday, the team will be working through what went wrong mechanically.
“There are still some things we want to understand from the package, some that worked well and some not so well, and work from there.”
Continue reading...
Speaking to Sky Sports after qualifying, Verstappen described the sequence that ended his session. “In that lap, on Turn 6, there was a big moment on entry. It is a bit weird as I have not had something like that all weekend.”
That was the warning. He didn’t heed it in time. “Then, in Turn 9, it was immediately gone. Not a small correction but full-lock off. That is a bit odd, so we will have a look.”
What the Crash Actually Cost Him
The RB22 found the barriers at Turn 9 in front of Red Bull’s home crowd, scattering gravel and bringing out double yellows through the final sector. The chaos that followed – George Russell completing a pole lap under those conditions, stewards initially noting a yellow flag infringement before clearing him entirely – somewhat overshadowed Verstappen’s situation. His earlier Q3 effort had clocked a 1m06.475s, placing him third at that stage of the session. Ultimately, the accident left him fifth on the grid, with Russell, Charles Leclerc, Lewis Hamilton, and Kimi Antonelli all ahead of him.
Fifth at a track where Verstappen had taken pole four years running, from 2021 through 2024, stings. He admitted the opportunity that slipped away. “It’s a shame as realistically we could have been P3. But getting off the line is hard for us so even P3 we might drop to P5.”
The qualifying session had already been trickier than it needed to be. In Q2, Red Bull left Verstappen in the garage deep into the session, calculating that his 1m07.183s would hold up – a decision partly driven by a desire to keep a fresh set of softs for Q3. The gamble nearly failed; he slid from seventh down to tenth before scraping through as cars around him couldn’t improve enough to bump him out.
On Sunday, the team will be working through what went wrong mechanically.
“There are still some things we want to understand from the package, some that worked well and some not so well, and work from there.”
Continue reading...
