{"id":23670,"date":"2025-07-25T18:38:21","date_gmt":"2025-07-25T18:38:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/23670\/"},"modified":"2025-07-25T18:38:21","modified_gmt":"2025-07-25T18:38:21","slug":"how-max-verstappen-lost-his-shot-at-f1-belgian-gp-pole-in-three-corners","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/23670\/","title":{"rendered":"How Max Verstappen lost his shot at F1 Belgian GP pole in three corners"},"content":{"rendered":"

A loss of nearly four tenths at the end of the second sector meant Max Verstappen<\/a> failed to challenge Oscar Piastri<\/a> in Formula 1\u2019s Belgian Grand Prix<\/a> sprint qualifying.<\/p>\n

McLaren<\/a> once again had the fastest car in all three segments of the session, though its drivers\u2019 execution was far from perfect, which allowed Verstappen to grab second place every time.<\/p>\n

Piastri in particular only just scraped through to the final contest, having had a lap time deleted due to breaching track limits in SQ2, while Norris ended up six tenths slower than his team-mate in the top-10 shootout.<\/p>\n

Still, Red Bull\u2019s Verstappen ended up 0.477s away from pole position. \u201cWe thought we would be nearer, but in Sector 2 we are just losing four tenths \u2013 not only us,\u201d Helmut Marko told Motorsport.com. \u201cAll the other drivers are losing this amount, and even more. So we made a step forward, but obviously it’s not enough to fight Piastri.\u201d<\/p>\n

As a matter of fact, Verstappen lost a whopping 0.393s on Piastri over the Fagnes right-left section and Stavelot corner. While Red Bull\u2019s strength was its car\u2019s downforce level in high-speed corners, the team was now banking on better top speed \u2013 345.3kph for Verstappen while Piastri reached 341.4kph in the session. But that was far from enough, even with several updates introduced on Verstappen\u2019s car, which Marko labelled \u201cdefinitely an improvement\u201d.<\/p>\n

The Austrian expanded on the gap to McLaren, speaking to Sky Germany: \u201cIt’s quite simply downforce. If we add more downforce, we lose too much on the straights, especially in Sectors 1 and 3. So you have to find the right compromise. But especially Piastri is incredible. It\u2019s not just us \u2013 everyone is getting that much from him. And for a single sector, that\u2019s quite a lot.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Max <\/p>\n

Max Verstappen, Red Bull Racing, Helmut Marko, Red Bull Racing<\/p>\n

Photo by: Red Bull Content Pool<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen you’re almost five tenths off, I don’t think going faster or slower on the straight is going to matter a lot,\u201d Verstappen insisted.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, Yuki Tsunoda<\/a> was outqualified by Verstappen for the 12th time in as many qualifying sessions<\/a> since he joined Red Bull, failing to reach Q3\/SQ3 for the seventh time in a row; his deficit on the Dutchman was six tenths, and he ended up 12th. It is worth noting that he was not given the upgrades that Verstappen is running this weekend.<\/p>\n

\u201cI know there are some things I can improve but at the same time, always missing out this close in Q3, it’s frustrating,\u201d said Tsunoda, who qualified 11th or 12th four times in the last six sessions.<\/p>\n

Read Also:<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, Marko doesn\u2019t think Tsunoda can make enough progress in Saturday\u2019s sprint race.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe’s getting closer, but I don\u2019t think there will be any points,\u201d he added. \u201cBut we\u2019re hoping in the main race on Sunday that he improves his qualifying performance a bit. But there is an upward trend. And again, he\u2019s not driving with the same specification as Max.\u201d<\/p>\n

Additional reporting by Jake Boxall-Legge<\/p>\n

Photos from Belgian GP – Friday<\/p>\n

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\"Oscar<\/p>\n


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\u00a0 <\/p>\n

In this article<\/p>\n

Be the first to know and subscribe for real-time news email updates on these topics<\/p>\n

Subscribe to news alerts<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A loss of nearly four tenths at the end of the second sector meant Max Verstappen failed to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":23671,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[441],"tags":[3272,49,48,578,15863,576,577,1885,2190,82],"class_list":["post-23670","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-formula-1","tag-belgian-gp","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-f1","tag-f1-belgian-grand-prix-2025","tag-formula-1","tag-formula1","tag-max-verstappen","tag-red-bull-racing","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23670","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23670"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23670\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/23671"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23670"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23670"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23670"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}