Verstappen confused by tough start to F1 Hungarian GP weekend

Max Verstappen has said “nothing really works” on his Red Bull Formula 1 car as he finished the Hungarian Grand Prix’s Friday sessions adrift of the frontrunners.

Verstappen finished the afternoon’s FP2 session in a lowly 14th position, 1.1s adrift of leader Lando Norris and behind cars from Haas, Aston Martin as well as his team-mate Yuki Tsunoda.

The reigning world champion rued a lack of balance on his “undriveable” RB21 that he said was like “driving on ice”, and swiftly disappeared into the Red Bull engineering ‘treehouse’ for a lengthy debrief with team boss Laurent Mekies, Tsunoda and their engineers.

Before the debrief, Verstappen acknowledged Red Bull’s trackside squad and its support staff at the Milton Keynes factory will have their work cut out. And while it wouldn’t be the first time this season the team can turn around its car set-up overnight, the Dutchman indicated there was no clear idea yet on why Friday was so difficult at the Hungaroring.

“Today was very tough, just a really low grip feeling and not really a balance in the car, so it’s difficult to say what the exact problem is,” Verstappen, who is third in the championship, said.

“Nothing really works, so this is something that we have to investigate overnight. So far, of course, it’s not been our weekend.

“I’m sure we can do better, but today was quite bad, so we need to really understand first where it is, and what is causing us to have such a big problem with the car. McLaren looks really on it, they’re flying, but there’s a lot to be [found] to be a little bit closer to P2.”

Red Bull handed warning for towel incident

Verstappen was also summoned by the stewards after throwing out an errant towel from his cockpit, a piece of cloth that was accidentally left in the car in between runs.

The stewards handed Red Bull a warning for an unsafe release, as the towel could have interfered with Verstappen’s operation of the pedals.

“It’s just a towel that you normally wipe your face with when you come back in, so it was still in the car when I went out,” Verstappen explained.

“Instead of it potentially flying in between my feet, which is the dangerous part, I drove offline and I got rid of it in the safest way possible, so I think the stewards understand that.”

Tsunoda, who is getting closer to Verstappen’s specification of Red Bull but hasn’t received the latest front wing yet, finished eight tenths off in ninth and has a different experience to his team-mate on Friday.

“I think the balance itself is not the main issue, to be honest,” Tsunoda said. “I think where we’re struggling is the grip that I should normally feel, and that’s where we’re lacking. But at least from our side we changed a lot of things into FP2 and it was a bit of a step from FP1.

“I’m sure there’s something positive that we can take from Max’s car and my car as well. So we just combine them and I feel like we have to find something, a core limitation that we’re probably missing.”