Max Verstappen said he was “not happy” with how qualifying went as he struggled with the balance of his Red Bull.
His run of six consecutive pole positions came to an end at the Hungaroring as Lewis Hamilton beat him by just three-thousandths of a second.Verstappen said his car felt “terrible” to drive in today’s session. “It doesn’t matter where you are on the grid, if it doesn’t feel good, it doesn’t feel good.
“The whole qualifying I’ve been struggling a lot. Well, the whole weekend really, with the shift in balance, with understeer and you try to correct it and it’s oversteer, and it was just never in a good window.”
He went into qualifying having only set the eighth-fastest time throughout practice and was still finding it hard to get the car to his liking.
“I was struggling a lot in Q1, Q2,” he said. “I mean, there’s not much you can do really once you go into qualifying.
“But every time I got to the apex of the corner it was just not gripping up for me and that’s probably the worst balance I can have in a car. I tried to correct a few things in Q3 but there’s only so much you can do.”
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After setting the provisional pole position time on his first run in Q3, Verstappen was unable to match it on his second run, which opened the door for Hamilton to beat him.
“Then on the second lap, already, the first sector was just, again, off. Then I just risked a bit more in sector two, which paid off, but in the last sector I again lost the front. It’s just really inconsistent and difficult to be progressive through qualifying. It was just hit and miss all the time.”
Red Bull brought one of its most significant updates for its dominant RB19 this weekend. “I think with the upgrades we brought as well to this weekend, it is extremely disappointing from our side,” said Verstappen. “I mean, we’re P2, but looking at how the whole year has been, this I didn’t expect to happen.”
However he doesn’t believe the balance problems he encountered are a consequence of the new parts Red Bull introduced this weekend. “The upgrade looks good,” said Verstappen, “it’s just we didn’t nail the balance of the car.”
“It’s just so inconsistent,” he added. “I just went out there [in Q3] and suddenly it just gripped up a little bit better. And then I put the second set, and it’s different again. So, it was just very difficult to drive today.
“Normally in qualifying you build up to it, you have a bit of margin and you know exactly where and how to push more. Because normally, naturally, in your second run, you improve. But today it was very hard.”
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asd
22nd July 2023, 21:17
Verstappen misses the PP by 0.003s = “I had the worst car ever”.
What is everybody else suppose to say then? He’s slowly turning into a Hamilton level diva.
SjaakFoo (@sjaakfoo)
22nd July 2023, 21:30
Figures this would be the first comment.
Given with how good the car has been in every race this season, does it not make sense to you that the race where it’s not good enough for pole position would actually be the worst the car has been so far?
Zap (@)
22nd July 2023, 22:41
0.003 seconds is a really really minuscule amount of time. At that level, the difference between first and second is no longer the car, but some slight variation between the drivers, and honestly it’s possible it was something beyond the control of either driver, like a gust of wind, that made the difference
It’s hardly worth claiming that the car’s “not good enough for pole” because it clearly was good enough, but for some tiny infinitesimal variation
SteveP
23rd July 2023, 8:47
Sort of correct. Hamilton got a gust of wind on the final corner, bit of a snap and a momentum loss for the corner exit – otherwise the gap would have been bigger, apparently. 0.150 as opposed to 0.003 – although how people can say that the gap pre-corner would have been the same after the corner with any level of certainty is an F1 engineer thing.
anon
23rd July 2023, 9:34
@sjaakfoo Verstappen has the fastest sector times in the first and third sectors and the second fastest in the middle sector, so you really can’t say that he’s been struggling for grip in any particular sector or that he’s been struggling for overall pace.
Autosport have done a breakdown of the telemetry data from Verstappen’s best lap, and they’ve pointed out that there were a few areas where Verstappen seems to have lost time on his fastest lap due to being a bit too aggressive with the throttle – on the exit of Turns 1 and 12, with Turn 12 being particularly noticeable for oversteer due to being overly aggressive on the throttle on corner exit. He also seemed to be a bit slow on corner entry in Turns 5 and 6 compared to his final Q3 attempt.
On his final Q3 attempt, his first sector was pretty close to the fastest one he’d set previously, and his second sector was much better after a much cleaner approach to Turns 5 and 6. However, it was all then undone by a relatively poor final sector, with him being particularly slow through Turns 13 and 14.
For all his criticism of the car, Verstappen’s Q3 laps were also not particularly clean either – it’s been pointed out that whilst Norris set all three of his best sectors on his final Q3 lap and Hamilton was only 0.04s off his theoretical best lap time with his pole lap, Verstappen could have bettered his lap time by 0.24s if he’d been as consistent as Norris or Hamilton were on their laps.
In other words, the telemetry indicates that the car did have the performance to put Verstappen on pole and that Verstappen just didn’t put together a particularly great lap in either of his runs in Q3.
Esploratore (@esploratore1)
23rd July 2023, 23:48
Exactly, we can see this in the other article on this site too, hamilton was 2 tenths closer to the ultimate lap than verst was.
MadMax (@madmax)
22nd July 2023, 21:48
Nice to see the RBR not being 0.5 to 1 sec faster than any other car. Anyhow tomorrow he should have an easy race again.
G
23rd July 2023, 0:08
When have RBR been 0.5 to 1sec faster in qualifying?
NewVerstappenFan (@jureo)
22nd July 2023, 22:00
So in F1, the difference between good and terrible nalance is 5 tenths?
Jere (@jerejj)
23rd July 2023, 5:22
Maybe, but race trim is another matter, so he should again win relatively comfortably under normal circumstances.