– Max Verstappen is struggling with both his car and his body at his home race in Zandvoort. The four-time world champion reportedly suffers from flu symptoms and emphasizes: “I don’t have as much energy as usual,” he said to the Dutch press after qualifying.
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Nevertheless, this is not a problem for the 28-year-old in the car. However, the RB26 does not exactly make his job easier at what is currently the last Formula 1 Grand Prix on the dune circuit. Sixth place in the sprint and seventh in qualifying are anything but pleasing for the orange-clad fans on site.
“We changed a lot on the car after the sprint, but none of it made a difference,” Verstappen explains to our sister portal Motorsport.com. He was more than four tenths of a second behind Lando Norris’s best time.
“The biggest problem with the car,” says Verstappen, “is the balance. It simply isn’t consistent throughout a corner, but that’s been the case all season. On some tracks it’s worse than on others.”
“Sometimes it depends on the asphalt, but also on the layout of the track. This certainly isn’t our best layout, but we just have to work on it. We can roughly imagine on which tracks it runs a bit better, but we have to try to solve it overall.”
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Instead of talking about setup problems, the four-time world champion emphasizes that these are fundamental design weaknesses of the RB26. “On this track, you have a few fast corners, and even there we are missing a bit,” he explains.
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“Basically, if you don’t have good balance, you can’t really attack the corners. And if you also lack traction, you don’t really get out of the corners well. All of that, of course, costs time.”
To Sky Sport F1, Verstappen summarizes the potential of the RB26 in Zandvoort as follows: “We are simply too slow. And if it is dry tomorrow, even if qualifying might have been wet, then you are just too slow.”
A home win at the farewell to Zandvoort is therefore not to be expected, although Verstappen has won here three times in his Formula 1 career. At least the Red Bulls should be pleased with the performance of Liam Lawson. After all, the Racing Bulls driver starts his substitute duty for the injured Isack Hadjar directly behind Verstappen.
