Lando Norris
McLaren
Mercedes
Red Bull
Ferrari
Williams
Racing Bulls
Aston Martin
Haas
Alpine
Max Verstappen sarcastically complained about his ‘impressively’ bad Red Bull car after British Grand Prix qualifying.
Verstappen qualified seventh for Sunday’s race, the best part of a second adrift of Kimi Antonelli’s benchmark. It’s the fourth time this year he lines up outside the top six, but the first since Japan.
That was also the last time teammate Isack Hadjar beat him on a Saturday. Verstappen whitewashed his teammates last season and beat Sergio Perez 23-1 the year before, so this is an exceedingly rare occurrence.
Name the biggest winner and biggest loser from Saturday’s qualifying session at the British GP 👇
Kimi Antonelli claimed his fifth pole position of the season at Silverstone!
Laurent Mekies explains what went wrong for Max Verstappen at British GP
Verstappen, who trailed Hadjar by a tenth and a half, attributed his off-colour performance to an issue with energy deployment on the straights.
At one point during the session, he described the situation as a ‘disaster’, and after the chequered flag fell, he said: “It gets worse and worse. It’s quite impressive.”
Team principal Laurent Mekies replied: “Tough one Max. We have a bit of work to do together tonight, but we will get to the bottom of it.”
Speaking to Dutch broadcaster Viaplay after the session, Mekies said Verstappen’s data confirmed that there was a problem, but the team hadn’t yet been able to identify the root cause.
What is Isack Hadjar’s ceiling as an F1 driver?
In addition to the power inconsistencies, the four-time world champion was also struggling with car balance.
“We could certainly see what Max was reporting,” said Mekies. “He was losing a lot of time on the straights. It’s quite difficult to have an explanation right now.
“To be honest, it was adding to the issues we had on the car side, where he couldn’t push in the way he normally is able to. All together it makes it P7, which is not a good day, but we learn from it.”
Verstappen finished sixth in the Sprint race earlier on Saturday, having lost three places from his starting berth.
Receive exclusive F1 news and updates twice a week to your mailbox
