Max Verstappen reveals bizarre Red Bull issue behind disappointing Canada qualifying
Red Bull's Max Verstappen has revealed he couldn't keep his feet on the pedals during Sprint Qualifying in Canada.
Max Verstappen found himself unable to keep his feet on the pedals due to the extent of his Red Bull jumping around during Sprint Qualifying on Friday.
The Dutch driver will start Saturday’s Sprint race at the Circuit Gilles Villeneuve in Montreal from seventh on the grid, having struggled with the handling of his Red Bull RB22 in Sprint Qualifying.
Max Verstappen explains unusual Red Bull problem in Canada Sprint Qualifying
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Verstappen looked like he might be a pole contender in Sprint Qualifying, as he ended the first part of the session in third place, just over a tenth down on fastest man Lewis Hamilton.
But the Red Bull driver wasn’t able to increase the pace in SQ2 and, while the benchmark was lowered to a 1:13.0 by George Russell, with Hamilton four-tenths behind in second, Verstappen went slower as he could only manage ninth-fastest and almost 1.4 seconds off the pace.
The four-time F1 World Champion took to team radio on his way back to the pits, complaining about his car jumping around and generally not enjoying the handling of the RB22.
In the third part of qualifying, Verstappen did two flying laps and the best of these netted him seventh on the grid, over half a second down on Russell’s best time.
Speaking to the media after climbing out, Verstappen was very clearly downbeat and unhappy as he revealed the extent of the trouble he had had behind the wheel during the Sprint Qualifying.
“I mean, I’m not surprised,” he said of his seventh place.
“I mean, my feeling in the car was not very good.
“I was struggling a lot with just the ride of the car, so all the bumps… I couldn’t put my foot down.
“Actually, my feet were even flying off the pedals, so yeah, it just made it very difficult to be consistent. And that’s something that we need to investigate.”
With the cars in parc ferme conditions for the Sprint race, there’s no opportunity to make any changes to improve the situation, and Verstappen revealed there had been no clear step forward from practice into the Sprint Qualifying session.
“No, that was not great,” he said.
“So, of course, we are stuck with that for the Sprint, but yeah, there are some other things to understand, and hopefully that will be a bit better for quali.”
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Facing a potentially disappointing weekend if Red Bull can’t make a stride forward when the car’s setup can be worked on again between the Sprint and the Grand Prix qualifying session, Verstappen shrugged his shoulders when asked to guess how the rest of the event could go.
“I don’t know, we’ll see,” he said.
Canada appears to be something of a return to early-season form for Red Bull, after struggling for performance in the opening races before an uptick in performance coincided with the roll-out of upgrades in Miami.
Earlier on Friday, Red Bull team boss Laurent Mekies had downplayed expectations of his team being consistently at the front from now on, saying that more steps are needed for that to happen.
“We don’t think it’s going to be a nice, linear road of recovery with closing the gap every race,” he said.
“There are going to be some bumps. People are going to bring updates one race, yes; one race, no; and we are going to see variations.
“But certainly Miami put us back into the fight. We know we need a lot more, but it confirms that most of the difficulties we have faced at the beginning of the season, we have managed to cure.
“We know we have a bit more to do and to get on with the development race at full speed now.”
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