Verstappen struggles with grip and balance: “At least a top car behind us”

– After Max Verstappen chose the weekend in the Netherlands to announce his contract extension with Red Bull until at least 2030, he experienced a mixed fate on the first day of track activities in Zandvoort.

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During the practice, Verstappen complained about poor shifting quality – a recurring problem with the car this year -, low grip, and an oversteering behavior in the only practice session, which he finished in an unusually poor eleventh place with a 1.376-second gap to the leading Mercedes of Kimi Antonelli.

The situation changed due to setup changes before the sprint qualifying, where he made it into the final top-10 shootout and qualified sixth ahead of Lewis Hamilton’s Ferrari: “I guess we left a [top] car behind us,” he summarized after the session to F1 TV.

“It was just a bit tricky to find the grip and balance. I mean, it was already a step forward compared to FP1. But of course, we still lack a bit to be further up,” the Dutchman continued.

“That’s something we need to understand – what we can do with the balance for tomorrow, I guess. To really find a bit more grip – a bit of balance, a bit of grip to reduce the gap a little.”

Does Verstappen now have to accept this?

With a long-term commitment to Red Bull, Verstappen has somewhat lost the opportunity to wield the proverbial whip over his team as he did in the recent past when credible threats of switching to other teams were in the air.

Contracts are made to be broken, but unlike Amazon purchases, they do not come with a 30-day return policy.

F1: Dutch Grand Prix (Zandvoort) 2026

The nature of Verstappen’s quotes and his resigned tone suggest that he will simply accept it. While Red Bull has the ability to conjure significantly improved setups overnight at Grand Prix weekends – unlike previous years, this is no longer quite enough to make the car a genuine contender for race wins.

With the caveat that part of the performance increase was due to track evolution, which applies to all competitors, Verstappen found just over seven tenths of a second between FP1 and SQ1 and drove a lap of 1:13.585 minutes.

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In this session, his temporary teammate Liam Lawson was even slightly faster with a time of 1:13.420 minutes.

Improvement was not enough

However, as grip on the track increased further during the session, Lawson’s SQ2 time of 1:13.136 minutes was not enough to make the jump into SQ3. Verstappen’s 1:12.745 minutes were enough for P8 behind the McLaren, Mercedes, and Ferrari drivers as well as Pierre Gasly’s Alpine.

Although Verstappen found a respectable chunk of time again in SQ3 and secured sixth place on the grid for the sprint with 1:12.094 minutes, he was 0.527 seconds behind the pole position of George Russell, as all the front runners except Hamilton improved by a similar margin.

Most threatening for Red Bull is the fact that the gap from Russell to McLaren’s Oscar Piastri in fourth place was only 0.099 seconds.

Kimi Antonelli in P5 was 0.227 seconds behind his Mercedes teammate but carried damage from an off-track excursion on his first fast lap.

Lawson himself could not explain why he only improved by three tenths between SQ1 and SQ2: “Usually, you improve somehow during qualifying,” he says. “And we started pretty strong in SQ1. But then we didn’t make the same step as everyone else. So, of course, we’ll take a close look at that. There’s a lot to learn today.”

“But so far, honestly, I feel pretty comfortable in the car. I felt good during qualifying. I thought we’d make it through, so it’s a shame.”

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