Yuki Tsunoda was knocked out in Q1, while Max Verstappen will start seventh after admitting that he struggled with his RB21 in every corner.
Red Bull Racing has struggled with its RB21 all season long, but Verstappen found it uniquely perplexing during qualifying for the team’s home race, the Austrian Grand Prix.
Yuki Tsunoda was knocked out in the first qualifying session, and while Verstappen did manage to scrape through to Q3, he was only able to set a time fast enough for seventh on the grid.
Speaking to media, including PlanetF1.com, after the session, Verstappen admitted that the team wasn’t expecting much on the performance front this weekend — but that the car felt far worse than expected.
“I think yesterday already was not good,” the reigning champion explained. “Over one lap, long run, it wasn’t good.
“And today, FP3, I think, was a little bit more positive. It was still off, but then in qualifying, everything felt bad. Every corner was a struggle.
“I just didn’t have the balance; was either understeer or oversteer.
“Even every single lap that I did, I had a bit of a different behaviour with the car, so yeah, that’s not ideal.”
It should go without saying that no driver wants to feel like they’re struggling with balance in every single corner — but Verstappen and the team still aren’t exactly sure what caused the issues.
The hotter conditions for qualifying, the Dutch driver admitted, “Probably didn’t help. The hotter conditions for sure are not that good for our car.”
But as he mentioned, the car felt good in FP3 — and the team “didn’t touch the car” between sessions.
“Just very tiny little changes that shouldn’t influence the car balance,” Verstappen explained.
“That’s all manageable, but suddenly, with the high track temps and more wind, everything just fell apart.
“I didn’t expect it to be this bad in qualifying, but I think no one did in the team. So that’s something we have to analyse.”
There were a few things Verstappen could confirm: These issues are not the same ones that were plaguing the RB21 at the start of the season; the swap from Gianpiero Lambiase to Simon Rennie on the pit box had nothing to do with the performance; and Red Bull’s upgrades package for this weekend can’t be deemed completely responsible for the lack of pace.
“It’s just suddenly we really took a step back, which is not what you want in qualifying from FP3,” Verstappen said.
Come race day, the Dutch driver isn’t expecting much from long-run pace.
“Not to fight up front for sure,” he explained.
“For sure the hotter conditions, they don’t help as well.
“And so far this year, we’ve never really been more competitive in the race than qualifying as well. We’ll see what we can do tomorrow.”
