Red Bull’s poor pace “a mystery” to Verstappen after qualifying eighth

Max Verstappen said he spent “just the whole weekend off the pace,” after qualifying a lowly eighth for the Hungarian Grand Prix.

The Red Bull driver found himself behind some unexpected rivals at the end of qualifying, including both Aston Martin drivers. He will share the eighth row of the grid with Gabriel Bortoleto, who beat him to seventh place by three thousandths of a second in his Sauber.

Verstappen said the whole weekend in Hungary had been a struggle to unlock pace from their car. “We didn’t seem to find it,” he admitted.

“We tried a lot as a team and unfortunately nothing really helped our balance,” Verstappen told the official Formula 1 channel.

“It’s really difficult to explain how this weekend we suddenly just had a lot of difficulties with the car. Just no grip on the front and rear, difficult to balance it out. It’s a bit of a mystery at the moment.”

Verstappen’s team mate Yuki Tsunoda was eliminated in the first round of qualifying. He said the car simply lacked grip.

“It’s just sliding around, I think pretty much that’s it, the grip normally we should get is not there and [there’s] probably something we are missing completely. That’s the main thing that we’re missing. We tried to find that in the race weekend but unfortunately we couldn’t.”

Tsunoda said he suffered a setback in final practice, where he ended up 19th of the 20 runners.

“Overall this weekend we struggled as a team,” he said. “Obviously even in that situation, I wanted to try to maximise performance, but it was just slow.

“Also, my FP3 preparation wasn’t good at all, which was in our control completely, and we completely missed that. So especially fighting in these tight sessions, it counts, those things, so it can’t happen like that.”

Advert | Become a RaceFans supporter and

2025 Hungarian Grand Prix

• Williams unlikely to score points in Hungary, says Sainz
• 2025 Hungarian Grand Prix strategy briefing: All the data to follow the race with
• Ferrari fourth-fastest but on pole position in Hungary: Lap time data
• F1 has its closest top four on a grid for 64 years – at least: Qualifying data
• Piastri says his car felt “terrible” after losing pole in “bizarre” end to qualifying

Browse all 2025 Hungarian Grand Prix articles