Max Verstappen pulls back the curtain on Red Bull's struggles as he qualifies outside of top 5 for the F1 Qatar GP sprint
Max Verstappen felt that the Red Bull just didn't have the pace and was too slow to compete against the rivals. The Dutch driver came into the Qatar GP weekend after sealing the title in Las Vegas. The track layout in Qatar is something that should have been expected to favor the Red Bull car. The car also looked more or less decent on the track.
The only issue appears to be the fact that the car lacks that one final jump that would propel it to the front. As a result, Verstappen could only put together a laptime that was good enough for P6 and slower than the likes of Lando Norris, Charles Leclerc, Carlos Sainz, George Russell and Oscar Piastri.
Max Verstappen will now start the sprint from P6 with Lewis Hamilton just behind him in P7. Talking to Sky Sports afterward about the disappointing session, Verstappen said that the car just didn't have the pace to compete. Explaining how he doesn't have balance mid-corner he said:
"Just no pace to be honest, just slow. I just don’t really have the balance to attack entry to mid-corner. The car is a bit off, so it makes it really difficult around here. The very high speed is ok but everything else is not ok and that makes it difficult to push."
He added:
"I think P6 is more or less where we should be, maybe even P7 actually. But of course that’s not where you want to be."
Max Verstappen predicts struggle for the sprint
Max Verstappen doesn't expect things to get much better as the driver felt that the long runs for all cars appear to be similar, and the track doesn't lean too heavily in favour of racing in general. The driver was not too positive about how the rest of the weekend would go as he said:
"In the Sprint it will be tough to fight the cars around me with just the balance that I have in the car. For the other qualifying, let’s see if we can improve the situation a bit, but I don’t expect it to be suddenly turned upside down and work. It’s not been amazing."
With the championship secured, there is remarkably less pressure on the driver right now. However, if that was not the case, there would be Red Bull meetings as well, and there would be some serious pressure on Max Verstappen.
Red Bull was expected to perform better this weekend but the car has unfortunately not had the right balance and continued to struggle compared to rivals Ferrari, McLaren and even Mercedes.