Red Bull ‘surprise’ David Croft after key mistake costs Max Verstappen at the Hungarian Grand Prix

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Max Verstappen has struggled massively with his RB21 at the Hungarian Grand Prix, defined by his worst qualifying result of the 2025 season.

The four-time world champion finished Q3 with the eighth fastest time of the session, with Charles Leclerc stunning the McLaren duo of Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri to take Ferrari’s first pole position of the season.

Verstappen‘s woes at the Hungaroring may be linked to the front-end upgrades Red Bull have brought to the track. Bernie Collins noted seeing Red Bull engineers ‘struggling’ to agree on the best way to set up the car during FP2 on Friday.

The Dutchman’s telemetry has also been painting a negative picture of his performance at the track so far this weekend. Media outlets have reported the ‘striking’ difference in the data between Verstappen and McLaren’s Lando Norris, who led every practice session.

Red Bull’s inability to fix Max Verstappen’s issues is the biggest ‘surprise’

Speaking on Sky Sports F1’s coverage of qualifying for the Hungarian Grand Prix (15:26 02/08), Martin Brundle and David Croft discussed Verstappen’s lack of pace in Q1, which saw the Red Bull man enter Q2 with the 11th fastest lap time.

“There will be a lot of head-scratching going on at Red Bull,” Brundle started, before asking Croft, “Max Verstappen managed 11th [in Q1] and looked like he was generally missing pace, wasn’t he?

Croft replied, “They were 11th in Q1, as you said, 12th in final practice, and 14th in second practice. So it’s not a surprise.

“The surprise is that they’ve not found a cure at Red Bull to whatever the issues were that were causing Max to say the car was not drivable on Friday. And it was sliding around, like he had no grip, especially out of the final corner where the fans are.”

Yuki Tsunoda also struggled massively in another poor qualifying for Red Bull

On the other side of the garage, Tsunoda’s woes in the RB21 continued as he crashed out of Q1 and locked himself into P16 on the grid for Sunday’s race.

Tsunoda welcomed the arrival of Laurent Mekies at the start of July, with many thinking the rekindling of the two former Racing Bulls members would see an uptick in the Japanese driver’s performances after a difficult start to his Red Bull career.

The Frenchman made an instant impact on his unsettled driver at the Belgian Grand Prix. Mekies handed Tsunoda one of Verstappen’s spare upgraded floors in a move that had never been seen during Christian Horner’s tenure at the team.

Tsunoda is out of contract with Red Bull at the end of the season, and he recently admitted that he would be lying if he wasn’t ‘worried’ about what his future at the team looks like.