Max Verstappen had to settle for the eighth fastest time during the first sprint qualifying of the year. The Red Bull simply didn’t stand a chance in Shanghai. He and teammate Isack Hadjar narrowly managed to qualify for SQ3, but were then unable to match the other top teams. The gap to polesitter George Russell was significant. In the run-up to the rest of the race weekend, however, Verstappen sees little room for improvement.
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During his cooldown lap, Max Verstappen was already venting his frustration to race engineer Gianpiero Lambiase. “I just can’t do it,” it sounded over the team radio. “The car is undriveable. I’ve really never experienced anything this bad.” During qualifying, the Dutchman went wide through the corners several times. He was visibly struggling with the steering of his RB22. “I know, it’s not on you,” Lambiase responded understandingly.
‘Disastrous’
Speaking to F1TV, Verstappen later clarified what Red Bull encountered on Friday. “It was disastrous all day, there was just zero pace in the car. I think the lack of grip was the biggest problem. No grip, no balance,” he summed up dryly. “Because of that, we lost a huge amount of time, especially in the corners. That then leads to other small problems.”
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For now, the gap to Mercedes is so large that Verstappen sees few chances to still compete for the prizes in China. To clarify: the Dutchman had to concede no less than 1.7 seconds to George Russell’s pole time in sprint qualifying. Can Red Bull still make adjustments for the rest of the weekend? “We’ll see,” he said indifferently. “I don’t actually know what we can do now.”
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