Max Verstappen only finished the sprint qualifying at the Brazilian Grand Prix in sixth place. The world champion struggles with his Red Bull and speaks of a completely unpredictable car.
“It was just rubbish,” says Verstappen on “Viaplay”. “I had a lot of vibrations in the car and was jumping all over the place. Plus, in the slow corners I had no grip, the car wouldn’t turn in and I had no traction. That was it.”
Verstappen already seemed frustrated on the radio and reported that the car felt “completely broken”. Neither he nor his teammate Yuki Tsunoda found their rhythm on the newly asphalted Interlagos circuit. Tsunoda was already eliminated in SQ1, while Verstappen was only able to escape into the top 10 by a tenth of a second. In the final shootout, they only managed sixth place on the grid behind Fernando Alonso, while McLaren driver Lando Norris took the sprint pole ahead of Andrea Kimi Antonelli and Oscar Piastri.
Verstappen feels differences between hard and soft
It was already apparent during training that Red Bull was having problems with grip. The RB21 still works well on the harder tires, but the driving experience drops on the soft tires. “I didn’t feel it so much on the hard tires, but it didn’t feel good on the soft tires,” explains Verstappen. “And it was the same story in sprint qualifying.”
Red Bull suspects an aerodynamic problem. Consultant Helmut Marko confirms that the car simply doesn’t have enough downforce: “There’s basically no grip, which means we don’t have enough downforce,” he says on ORF. “We can’t fix that for the sprint race. But hopefully we can use the data to find out how we can be more competitive for the main race.”
Marko: Losing four tenths in the middle sector
Marko specifies where Red Bull loses most of the time: “We are down to a hundredth in sector one and sector three. In sector two, where most of the corners are, we simply lack the necessary downforce, the necessary grip,” he explains. “We lose four tenths in a relatively very short period of time and we simply don’t get any grip. Things worked out better with the medium tire, but ultimately it’s a question of downforce – and something doesn’t seem to be working properly.”
The Austrian also points out the difficulties with the new asphalt in Interlagos. “There are various factors that come into play,” says Marko. “With a medium tire everything was much better, and if you have less downforce, then – the better the tire grips – the more severe the effect is.”
Hope for data and maybe rain
Marko doesn’t expect any miracles for the sprint race. “I don’t see any possibilities for the sprint race, unless it rains,” he says. “But the most important thing is that we evaluate the data from the sprint accordingly. Yuki Tsunoda is on the same setup, which means we get twice the data so that we can find out why we are losing so much in Sector 2.”
However, the long run data from the first training session gives him some encouragement: “The long runs were better, but that was a tough tire,” says Marko. “At the moment we don’t actually know exactly which tires we will use for tomorrow’s sprint race.”
However, Verstappen himself does not believe that rain would help him. “I think it’s pretty clear we’re missing something,” he says. “I don’t expect it to suddenly be much better in the wet. It’s just pretty bad for us.”
Tsunoda out early again
Yuki Tsunoda is also having a difficult Friday. For the third time in four sprint qualifyings he was eliminated in SQ1. There was also an early collision with the wall in the first training session, which cost a lot of training time. “That’s a bit disappointing, we expected more,” says Marko. “But when the car becomes more difficult to drive, we have always seen that the distance to Max increases accordingly.”
Red Bull is facing a difficult Saturday. The RB21 suffers from a lack of grip on the soft tires, the downforce is not right – and Verstappen himself describes the car as “just rubbish”.