For Max Verstappen the Hungarian GP weekend has been something of a nightmare this far, and his car was sliding so much that at one point in qualifying he said it was like driving on ice even on his out lap.
In the end he was almost relieved to have made it into Q3 and earned P8 – albeit with a couple of Aston Martins and a Sauber ahead.
Had Lewis Hamilton and Kimi Antonelli qualified where their cars should in reality have been, Verstappen would indeed have been edged out of the top 10.
In fact over the three practice sessions he was ninth, 14th and 12th – not where you would usually expect him to be.
“I mean, looking at the whole weekend, I think we are happy to be in Q3 because I’ve been more outside of the top 10 than,” he said when I asked him about qualifying.
“It’s been difficult. The whole weekend no grip, front and rear, and it was the same in qualifying. So for me, it was not really a shock. I just drove to what I already feel the whole weekend.”
He admitted that the team didn’t know what the issue was: “No, clearly not, otherwise, of course, we would have changed it already. But somehow, this weekend, nothing seems to work.”
Verstappen acknowledged that RBR also had a difficult Hungary last year, although not to quite the same degree.
“I think we still qualified very close to pole, like within a few hundredths, so I think we were a lot more competitive back then. But yeah, this weekend already, from lap one, it just fell off, and we threw the car around a lot, and nothing really gave a direction.
“And that of course is the biggest problem, because normally, when you use or you change a lot on the side of it will always give you positives or negatives, and now just nothing works.
“It’s like just going around in circles, and nothing gave you any kind of idea of what to do.”
He added: “There’s not been a single lap or a single corner that I felt good. So the whole weekend so far, it’s just been sliding.”
That sliding won’t help his tyres in race conditions. Normally you would expect an out-of-position Verstappen to make progress, but it could turn into a rear guard action.
“There may be a car a few cars in front of me that I can maybe battle with a little bit. But of course, also Lewis is still a bit further down the road, which I think he shouldn’t be there, right? So he will come through a bit.”
So is this the worst weekend he can recall over the past couple of seasons?
“I mean, we have had a few Singapore disasters. So yeah, I mean, it’s just not been a good one for sure…”
Adam Cooper F1 