‘Nothing worked’ - Max Verstappen explains Red Bull’s Hungary woes

Max Verstappen has lamented what is turning into a torrid weekend for Red Bull at the Hungarian Grand Prix.

Four-time world champion Verstappen has struggled all weekend and only qualified eighth, behind Sauber’s Gabriel Bortoleto, at the Hungaroring.

Verstappen declared his RB21 car as “undriveable” on Friday as he ended up as the slower Red Bull driver in a practice session for the first time in 2025.

Things barely got any better in qualifying on Saturday, though Verstappen was at least able to place inside the top-10.

“Looking at the whole weekend I think we are happy to be in Q3 because I’ve been more outside the top 10 than in,” Verstappen told media in Hungary, where Crash.net are on the ground.

“The whole weekend I’ve had no grip. Front and rear and it was the same in qualifying. So for me, it’s not really a shock, I just drove to what I already feel the whole weekend.”

Asked if Red Bull have identified the issue, Verstappen quipped back: “No clearly not, otherwise we would of course changed it already. Somehow this weekend nothing seems to work.”

Red Bull ‘going round in circles’

The reigning world champion added: "This weekend already from lap one just felt off. We threw the car around a lot and nothing really gave the direction.

“That of course is the biggest problem because when you change a lot from the set up it will always give you positives or negatives, and ours was just nothing worked.

“It was just going round in circles and nothing gave you any kind of idea of what to do.

“There’s not been a single lap or a single corner that I’ve felt good. The whole weekend so far has just been sliding.

“I have no grip. I knew it wouldn’t be the strongest weekend for us here but I didn’t know it was going to be this hard.”

Verstappen is 81 points behind championship leader Oscar Piastri - who starts Sunday’s grand prix from second - and has already ruled himself out of being able to defend his world title.

“We are not anyway fighting anymore in the championship battle, so you just try to have good weekends here and there. This has clearly been a bad one so far,” he said.

And Verstappen has little hope of things getting better in Sunday’s race.

“There’s a few cars ahead of me that I can maybe battle with a little bit, but of course Lewis is a little bit further down the road and he shouldn’t be there right,” he added. “So he will come through a bit.”