to progress beyond Q1<\/a> for the first time since 2021 and admitting that Red Bull\u2019s pace simply \u201cwasn\u2019t there.\u201d<\/p>\n\u201cI can forget about that,\u201d Verstappen said when asked about his championship hopes after the session.<\/p>\n
When pressed if he really meant it, he replied, \u201cYes, for sure. Where we are starting, that is not going to work. And with these kind of performances, I mean, forget about it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Verstappen\u2019s elimination capped a miserable day for Red Bull, with teammate Yuki Tsunoda also knocked out in 19th \u2014 the team\u2019s first double Q1 exit since 2006.<\/p>\n
Verstappen\u2019s frustrations had already been mounting earlier in the day after finishing only fourth in the Sprint, losing further ground in the standings to Lando Norris, who went on to claim pole position for Sunday\u2019s race.<\/p>\n
The result extends Verstappen\u2019s deficit to the McLaren driver to 39 points in the championship.<\/p>\n
Speaking after qualifying, Verstappen struggled to hide his disbelief at how far off the pace he had been.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was just bad,\u201d he told Sky Sports F1.<\/p>\n
\u201cI couldn\u2019t push at all. The car was all over the place, sliding around a lot.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo, yeah, I had to underdrive it a lot just to not have a moment and that, of course, doesn\u2019t work in qualifying.\u201d<\/p>\n
Verstappen explained that despite significant setup changes between sessions, nothing improved the RB21\u2019s handling.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe whole weekend has been already quite tough, but this is a bit unexpected I would say after changing quite a bit on the car,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was just not responding, I had no grip out there, so I had to really massively underdrive it basically and it just didn\u2019t work.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Dutchman said the team was at a loss to explain what had gone wrong.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe need to understand what our problems are, first of all,\u201d Verstappen said.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s not been good. We don\u2019t really understand why it\u2019s going this way. There\u2019s just no grip.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe changed a few things on the car, and it didn\u2019t work, so that\u2019s something we need to figure out because nothing really seemed to work, and we just don\u2019t understand.\u201d<\/p>\n
He added that even when making adjustments, the car gave no feedback.<\/p>\n
\u201cSomething is clearly not working for us, even with the changes in the setup,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cNormally, you would feel some kind of reaction, but there wasn\u2019t.\u201d<\/p>\n
Red Bull\u2019s struggles were compounded by Tsunoda\u2019s comments that the pair had gone in similar setup directions, though the Japanese driver denied that was the issue.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe made a change in the sprint race, which gave us a good idea to make the car better, we thought,\u201d Tsunoda said.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe also took the set-up that I was using. Now, I don\u2019t want to blame my set-up, because I think the set-up was OK, the main thing is we didn\u2019t make the tyre work.\u201d<\/p>\n
Verstappen\u2019s qualifying woes mark a dramatic turn in a season that had briefly swung back his way after four wins in five races earlier in the year.<\/p>\n
But the reigning champion conceded that his chances of a fifth consecutive title are all but gone after another setback in Brazil.<\/p>\n
\u201cSomething is just really off,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cDefinitely something is off, and we don\u2019t seem to understand how to fix it at the moment.\u201d<\/p>\n
Norris backs up Sprint win with Sao Paulo GP pole, Verstappen out in Q1<\/a><\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A dejected Max Verstappen walks through the pits after his Q1 exit. Image: XPB Images The four-time world…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":272567,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[573],"tags":[64,63,817,813,816,825,918,153338,85],"class_list":["post-272566","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-formula-1","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-f1","tag-formula-1","tag-formula1","tag-max-verstappen","tag-red-bull","tag-sao-paulo-gp","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/272566","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=272566"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/272566\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/272567"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=272566"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=272566"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=272566"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"\u2018Forget](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/XPB_1384806_HiRes.jpg\")