{"id":940988,"date":"2026-10-21T06:38:11","date_gmt":"2026-10-21T06:38:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/940988\/"},"modified":"2026-10-21T06:38:11","modified_gmt":"2026-10-21T06:38:11","slug":"ill-probably-need-to-order-a-new-spine-verstappen-braced-for-bumpy-weekend-at-cota-racefans","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/940988\/","title":{"rendered":"\u201cI\u2019ll probably need to order a new spine\u201d \u2013 Verstappen braced for bumpy weekend at COTA \u2013 RaceFans"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.racefans.net\/max-verstappen\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Max Verstappen<\/a> expects a rough ride from the notorious bumps at the Circuit of the Americas this weekend.<\/p>\n<p>The track in Austin, Texas has a reputation for being one of the bumpiest on the calendar. The race promoters have attempts to ease the bumps on several occasions and F1\u2019s latest generation of cars are supposed to offer a less harsh ride than the \u2018ground effect\u2019 designs used last year.<\/p>\n<p>However after watching footage of the World Endurance Championship round at COTA last month (below), Verstappen expects a tough time this weekend.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cFrom what I saw in WEC, the track is incredibly bumpy,\u201d he said. \u201cOh my God, yeah, I\u2019ll probably need to order a new spine, I think, after the weekend. I\u2019ll become like RoboCop. That\u2019s a new challenge for everyone, to deal with those bumps.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Red Bull go into this weekend\u2019s race as the favourites to win, having performed strongly across the three previous rounds. Verstappen has taken two grand prix wins, one sprint race win and second place in a grand prix over that time.<\/p>\n<p>However he says the different characteristics of the upcoming circuits makes it unclear how competitive they will be.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI don\u2019t want to say now that I will be in the fight in Austin,\u201d said Verstappen. \u201cThe last few weekends have been great.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cBut I just take it race by race and once we are in Austin, then we\u2019ll see how it will go there. It\u2019s again a very different track.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cFrom there we have to go to Mexico [which is] high altitude, everything will run super-hot,\u201d he added. \u201cWe need to see how the engine is going to perform in that altitude, how the car is behaving, because it\u2019s very different.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cSo there are so many different things that you can get right or wrong in those races, but we\u2019ll see.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<p class=\"text-above-ad\">Advert | <a href=\"https:\/\/www.racefans.net\/contribute-racefans\/racefans-supporter\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Become a RaceFans supporter and go ad-free<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Formula 1<br \/>\n<a href=\"https:\/\/www.racefans.net\/category\/formula-1\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Browse all Formula 1 articles<\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Max Verstappen expects a rough ride from the notorious bumps at the Circuit of the Americas this weekend.&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":940989,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[441],"tags":[49,48,578,576,577,82],"class_list":["post-940988","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-formula-1","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-f1","tag-formula-1","tag-formula1","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/940988","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=940988"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/940988\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/940989"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=940988"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=940988"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=940988"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}