Max Verstappen is struggling to figure out what’s wrong with his Red Bull car, and he’s getting pretty frustrated about it.
“With the changes of the setup normally you would feel some kind of reaction. But it doesn’t so yeah, something is just really off I don’t know,” Verstappen said.
The Dutch driver didn’t hold back after qualifying, making it clear the team is searching for answers.
“We need to understand what our problems are, first of all. I mean, it’s just not being good. It seems like we don’t really understand why it’s going that way.”
When asked about the root of their problems? His answer was simple.
“Just no grip.”
The team has been trying different setups, but nothing seems to make a difference. It’s a puzzling situation for the normally dominant Red Bull squad.
“I changed a few things in the car and it didn’t work. That’s something that we need to figure out,” he explained.
What’s most concerning is that the team seems completely lost when it comes to fixing the issues.
“Nothing really seems to work. We changed a lot on the car. We just don’t understand the slow speed section.”
Verstappen is especially frustrated because typically when engineers make adjustments to the car, drivers can feel the difference—good or bad. But right now, nothing they try is making any impact.
“Something is clearly just not working for us. With the changes of the setup normally you would feel some kind of reaction. But it doesn’t, so yeah, something is just really off.”
Despite the setbacks, neither Verstappen nor Red Bull are giving up.
“There’s so many things that we need to get right, I guess. So we’ll look overnight again, I guess, to try something or understand something.”
The championship situation is getting serious for Verstappen. He’s now 39 points behind leader Lando Norris and 30 points behind Oscar Piastri.
For a driver who’s dominated F1 in recent years, this sudden performance drop is both surprising and concerning.
