Max Verstappen condemned his Red Bull\u2019s performance as having reduced his efforts to a matter of \u201csurvival\u201d in merely trying to complete a lap in Shanghai.<\/p>\n
From the off the four-time champion had not been happy in the build up to Sunday\u2019s Chinese Grand Prix, dismissing his car on Friday as undriveable and admitting: \u201cWe have never had anything this bad.\u201d<\/p>\n
Verstappen qualified only in eighth and finished the sprint out of the points in ninth on Saturday morning. In qualifying, there had been hope setup changes would reap some reward but Verstappen was left even further adrift. He finished a full second slower than the pole-sitter, Mercedes\u2019 Kimi Antonelli.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe change a lot on the car, and it makes zero difference,\u201d Verstappen said. \u201cThe whole weekend we\u2019ve been off. The car is completely undriveable. I cannot even put a bit of a reference in. Every lap is like survival.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe turned it upside-down and it was exactly the same, so I\u2019m expecting exactly the same tomorrow. In the past, sometimes we would throw it upside-down and it would work. Now, nothing works.\u201d<\/p>\n
In Australia, Verstappen made a recovery drive from 20th to sixth but the Red Bull\u2019s shortcomings have been brutally exposed in China. With the RB22 lacking balance, it was all but impossible to push for a fast lap time.<\/p>\n
Max Verstappen endures a day to forget in Shanghai after finishing the sprint race outside the points then qualified almost one second adrift of pole-sitter Kimi Antonelli. Photograph: Mark Thompson\/Getty Images<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s very inconsistent. Whatever lap I do, I am like: \u2019All right, well, that is it\u2019,\u201d he added. \u201cCan I go four 10ths faster? Maybe. Can I go four 10ths slower? Yeah, that\u2019s a big chance as well because it\u2019s just all over the place. It\u2019s just incredibly difficult. It\u2019s incredibly tough to drive. There\u2019s no balance, I cannot lean on the car. Every lap is a fight. It\u2019s just very difficult.\u201d<\/p>\n
Red Bull have built their own engines for the first time and in pre-season testing seemed to have made a solid job of it, but at race weekends the team that once dominated F1 are far from where they want it to be. Verstappen\u2019s teammate Isack Hadjar came 15th in the sprint race and finished ninth in qualifying.<\/p>\n
They were outpaced by the Alpine of Pierre Gasly in qualifying as well as Mercedes, Ferrari and McLaren. On Friday the Red Bull team principal Laurent Mekies had admitted that the team had to improve in every area,.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe gap to Ferrari and Mercedes is substantial, it\u2019s probably half in the straight, half in the corner,\u201d he said. \u201cThere is not one single area that we need to improve. It\u2019s a 360 improvement. It\u2019s going to be a development race. There is not one single area that we pinpoint in terms of the gap to the competition but it\u2019s going to be a full effort from all departments.\u201d<\/p>\n
The world champion Lando Norris also admitted his McLaren had a performance deficit to Mercedes and Ferrari after he qualified in fifth. The British driver said McLaren, constructors\u2019 champions in 2025, did not know why they were losing significant amounts of time to the front-runners.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy final sector has been pretty poor and we have been losing a little bit on the straights to some of the other cars which we need to understand why,\u201d said Norris. \u201cThe last corner here is like my worst corner of the season, I can\u2019t get it right, and I made quite a big mistake on my final lap there. Where we are now is where we deserve to be and where we should be.\u201d<\/p>\n
Lewis Hamilton ended last season without a podium for the first time, and at one stage he was so disillusioned he even called for Ferrari to replace him, but he finished fourth a week ago in Australia, and will be intent on going one better on Sunday after qualifying in third to record a first top-three finish in 477 days.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re hunting, we\u2019re chasing, and I know everyone is geared up to just do everything they can to close that gap to Mercedes,\u201d said Hamilton. \u201cIt\u2019s highly unlikely that we will be able to beat them in the race. Our statistics show they are between four and six tenths faster than us.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut maybe with strategy, maybe something can happen, maybe with the start, maybe there\u2019s a way. I definitely need to make sure I don\u2019t kill my tyres trying to either keep up with them or keep one behind. I need to drive better tomorrow.\u201dMax Verstappen condemned his Red Bull\u2019s performance as having reduced his efforts to a matter of \u201csurvival\u201d in merely trying to complete a lap in Shanghai.<\/p>\n
From the off the four-time champion had not been happy in the build up to Sunday\u2019s Chinese Grand Prix, dismissing his car on Friday as undriveable, admitting: \u201cWe have never had anything this bad.\u201d<\/p>\n
Verstappen qualified only in eighth and finished the sprint out of the points in ninth on Saturday morning. In qualifying, there had been hope setup changes would reap some reward but Verstappen was left even further adrift. He finished a full second slower than the pole-sitter, Mercedes\u2019 Kimi Antonelli.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe change a lot on the car, and it makes zero difference,\u201d Verstappen said. \u201cThe whole weekend we\u2019ve been off. The car is completely undriveable. I cannot even put a bit of a reference in. Every lap is like survival.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe turned it upside-down and it was exactly the same, so I\u2019m expecting exactly the same tomorrow. In the past, sometimes we would throw it upside-down and it would work. Now, nothing works.\u201d<\/p>\n
In Australia, Verstappen made a recovery drive from 20th to sixth but the Red Bull\u2019s shortcomings have been brutally exposed in China. With the RB22 lacking balance, it was all but impossible to push for a fast lap time.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s very inconsistent. Whatever lap I do, I am like: \u2019All right, well, that is it\u2019,\u201d he added. \u201cCan I go four 10ths faster? Maybe. Can I go four 10hs slower? Yeah, that\u2019s a big chance as well because it\u2019s just all over the place. It\u2019s just incredibly difficult. It\u2019s incredibly tough to drive. There\u2019s no balance, I cannot lean on the car. Every lap is a fight. It\u2019s just very difficult.\u201d<\/p>\n
Red Bull have built their own engines for the first time and in pre-season testing seemed to have made a solid job of it, but at race weekends the team that once dominated F1 are far from where they want it to be. Verstappen\u2019s teammate Isack Hadjar came 15th in the sprint race and finished ninth in qualifying.<\/p>\n
Max Verstappen fans in the crowd were left feeling disappointed after his eighth-place finish. Photograph: Andy Wong\/AP<\/p>\n
They were outpaced by the Alpine of Pierre Gasly in qualifying as well as Mercedes, Ferrari and McLaren. On Friday the Red Bull team principal Laurent Mekies had admitted that the team had to improve in every area.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe gap to Ferrari and Mercedes is substantial, it\u2019s probably half in the straight, half in the corner,\u201d he said. \u201cThere is not one single area that we need to improve. It\u2019s a 360 improvement. It\u2019s going to be a development race. There is not one single area that we pinpoint in terms of the gap to the competition but it\u2019s going to be a full effort from all departments.\u201d<\/p>\n
The world champion Lando Norris admitted that McLaren had a performance deficit to Mercedes and Ferrari after he qualified in fifth. Norris said McLaren, constructors\u2019 champions in 2025, did not know why they were losing significant amounts of time to the front-runners.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy final sector has been pretty poor and we have been losing a little bit on the straights to some of the other cars which we need to understand why,\u201d said Norris, who beat Max Verstappen to the world title in 2025. The last corner here is like my worst corner of the season, I can\u2019t get it right, and I made quite a big mistake on my final lap there. Where we are now is where we deserve to be and where we should be.\u201d<\/p>\n
Lewis Hamilton said he is \u201chunting and chasing\u201d Mercedes as he eyes the first podium of his Ferrari career. Hamilton ended last season without a podium for the first time but finished fourth a week ago in Australia, and will be intent on going one better on Sunday to record a first top-three finish in 477 days, having started from third on the grid.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re hunting, we\u2019re chasing, and I know everyone is geared up to just do everything they can to close that gap to Mercedes,\u201d said Hamilton. \u201cIt\u2019s highly unlikely that we will be able to beat them in the race. Our statistics show they are between four and six tenths faster than us. But maybe with strategy, maybe something can happen, maybe with the start, maybe there\u2019s a way. I definitely need to make sure I don\u2019t kill my tyres trying to either keep up with them or keep one behind. I need to drive better tomorrow.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Max Verstappen condemned his Red Bull\u2019s performance as having reduced his efforts to a matter of \u201csurvival\u201d in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":539831,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[573],"tags":[64,63,817,813,816,85],"class_list":["post-539830","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-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/539830","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=539830"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/539830\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/539831"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=539830"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=539830"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=539830"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}