Max Verstappen downplays Red Bull straight-line speed despite qualifying surprise

The media buzz surrounding Max Verstappen and Red Bull Racing never had a chance to die down during the three-week break between the British and Belgian Grand Prix — but the reigning champion finally gave us something new to talk about.

Verstappen looked impressively strong in Sprint qualifying at the Circuit de Spa-Francorchamps — but he’s warned that his hints of speed may not net him a win.

Max Verstappen scores P2, downplays speed

Just under three weeks have separated the start of the Belgian Grand Prix weekend from the conclusion of the British Grand Prix, but the media buzz surrounding Max Verstappen and his Red Bull Racing team has only grown.

Just after the race at Silverstone, Red Bull team principal and CEO Christian Horner was released from his role at the team with immediate effect. While the team has not offered any explicit reasoning for the departure, many suspect that it has to do, at least partially, with a downturn in performance on the part of the team.

Though Max Verstappen currently sits third in the World Drivers’ Standings, he’s far adrift of the McLaren duo at the front of the pack, and it appears that his hopes of achieving a fifth consecutive championship are growing slimmer each day.

In fact, as Red Bull has struggled, rumours about Verstappen potentially making a swap to Mercedes have come to the fore.

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But at the Belgian Grand Prix, Max Verstappen changed the narrative.

After one practice session, the Formula 1 field descended upon Spa in anger to begin setting flying laps ahead of Saturday’s Sprint race. It was a tense session that saw major players eliminated early on — but Verstappen wasn’t one of them.

He and his Red Bull team opted to utilise a low-downforce set-up this weekend, similar to what they did at Silverstone. This allows the team to capitalise on its primary strength: straight-line speed. The decision proved to be a correct one — at least as far as Sprint qualifying was concerned — because Verstappen secured a second-place start. He’ll be sandwiched between the McLarens of Oscar Piastri and Lando Norris.

The Dutch driver was pleased while speaking with F1TV after the session, saying that he thinks he maximised what was possible today.

“Being P2 between them is already a good result for us, and I do think we maximised that,” he explained.

“I enjoyed it out there. The lap itself was fine; it was good.

“Of course the gap is very big, but it’s been big already from FP1 so it’s not a big surprise.

“We just have to focus on ourselves and work on of course the balance of the car and try to go faster.”

Verstappen credits the reduction in downforce as giving him a boost on the straight-lines — but he wouldn’t go so far as to claim that boost will be enough to win any races.

“I mean, when you’re almost five-tenths off, I don’t think going faster or slower on the straight is gonna matter a lot,” he said with a laugh.

“We just have to do our own race and see what we can do.”

The set-up change seemed to be more immediately clear to Verstappen; he admitted that he’s not quite sure how some of Red Bull’s minor upgrades and tweaks have impacted his RB21.

“It’s always difficult in a sprint weekend to say exactly what they do, and of course when you look at the gap, that’s not what we want, right?” he said.

“But we keep improving, keep trying to find more performance, but obviously other teams do the same thing. That’s just how it goes.”

Verstappen will start the 2025 Belgian Grand Prix Sprint from the front row of the grid.

Read next: Belgian GP: Piastri survives scare to secure Spa sprint pole as Hamilton hits new low