Max Verstappen says they couldn’t understand the root cause of their pace lack in F1 Hungarian GP, as he feels the investigation for move against Lewis Hamilton was useless.
It was a weekend to forget for Red Bull in F1 Hungarian GP at Hungaroring. From the get go, Verstappen was far down the order, with Yuki Tsunoda faring no better in huge terms. The Dutchman managed to get into Q3, but could not make it into the Top 5 against the competition.
The expected turnover from Friday to Saturday didn’t happen because Red Bull was unable to trace the root cause of their issue. It was not balance that troubled them but lack of grip, which could be a fundamental issue with the car on a circuit like Hungaroring.
Eventually, Verstappen struggled in the grand prix despite making two places initially. He was stuck behind Gabriel Bortoleto and a strategy change didn’t help either. In fact, he was stuck behind Liam Lawson in the second part and eventually had to settle for ninth.
“I don’t know, I think that’s not our biggest problem,” said Verstappen. “The whole weekend, we were just really slow. We just struggled a lot for grip in low speed, medium speed. That was also the problem in the race. Whatever we would have done, staying out long, doing what we did, I think we would have been struggling anyway.
“We have ideas [about why the weekend has been like this], but I cannot disclose it. I don’t know, yet. It’s a bit easy to say that, but we’ll have a look. This weekend, we just didn’t have a fast car. That’s the problem [that I was unable to clear Liam]. As for my early stop, I think a combination of the two [getting stuck and tyres going away], because I didn’t feel good on the tyres anyway, and the grip was just sliding around a lot.
“I got stuck in too much traffic. The problem was that even with newer tyres, I just didn’t have the low-speed grip. Everyone was just pulling away from me in all the low-speed corners, and I couldn’t really attack anything. It just made everything really difficult,” summed up Verstappen, who had a moment against Lewis Hamilton in his bid to recover places after the second stop.
The stewards pushed the investigation to after the race but Hamilton was a no show. Eventually, they filed it under no further investigation. Verstappen explained his bit that Hamilton went off on his own eventually. The Dutchman reiterated his bid about too many rules requiring such investigations which makes little sense to attend and discuss.
“The thing is that nothing happened,” continued Verstappen. “We didn’t even touch. That’s the thing. For me, it’s a bit difficult to understand why we had the investigation after the race. Lewis was not there, but we explained our sides of the story. I don’t think Lewis actually felt a lot for it, because if he really felt something for it, then of course he’s there in the stewards’ room.
“I think both of us didn’t have the best of weekends anyway. That’s just one little thing. The more important thing is that we have to look at our performance, which was not good. Nothing, I went for a move up the inside, because it’s a fast corner. But with downforce, you’re a bit more under control anyway. I think he realised very late that I was up the inside there.
“He turned out of it a little bit and then, of course, went off the track. That was it. We didn’t touch. Nothing happened. I don’t know. I think the problem is that we have so many rules, of course. It’s always a complicated matter. It’s not always super clear with things. It is always a bit weird that you have to go to the stewards for something that you didn’t have even a contact or whatever.”
Team boss Laurent Mekies echoed what Verstappen said regarding the issues Red Bull facing in Hungary. He noted that they couldn’t switch on the tyres and the narrow window of performance was too narrow for their liking, where even the Dutchman struggled to eke out performance.
They could ascertain their troubles from the get go in FP1 when they understood that they have a problem at their hands. “Well, at first the honest answer is that if we knew we would probably have fixed it,” said Mekies to media. “What I can tell you is that it was there from the first lap in FP1. We looked at each other and said, what’s going on?
“And we could see in all the slow speed, medium speed, we are just very slow, minimum speed. It was something we couldn’t say that it was balance-related. It didn’t look balance-related, it was just quite a large amount. So we felt that we couldn’t put the car in the right window, we couldn’t switch on the tyres. But sometimes it happens in FP1, but not in that magnitude.
“It felt wrong from the beginning and we tried very many things. The good thing is that the guys really went out and tried with both cars, different things. It didn’t do any difference, we couldn’t switch on the tyres, long run, short run, sometimes it makes you get, by luck or by merit, in the right window. But this never quite happened. And it was like that in qualifying.
“Of course, you can always look at your best sample and think that this was actually alright. But the truth is, it never quite came back. I think it’s been a theme this year to say that it’s quite a narrow window and sometimes very narrow. I think today was a lot more than that. We were really unable to get the car to work.”
With Verstappen they tried to play around with strategy but lack of performance didn’t help. They even tried for a one stop strategy, but that didn’t work either. “I mean, it’s always tough when you start from the back, and it’s always tough when you don’t have the performance in the car,” continued Mekies. “So I think early on he made a few quite impressive moves in the first few laps, overtaking the chicanes where we are not used to see many overtakings there.
“And then it became quite clear that we would get stuck behind Gabriel for as long as Gabriel would go. So we were stuck there. Of course, you can always stay there and accept to be there until the end of the race, but we felt we would try to get our luck through the traffic. So we pitted early, struggled like hell to go through the traffic, despite some more good moves from Max. And ultimately, at some stage, we also thought there was a small possibility to get to the end.
“It was very, very much a long shot, and I think nobody made it to the end from that distance. I mean, you can make it, but you are not going to be very fast. So we did one more stop. Again, he had a large pace advantage at that stage to go through, but the truth is we didn’t manage to go through. So I think, again, I think the focus for us is that we have enough lap time in the car.”
Here’s move on Lewis Hamilton: https://www.formula1.com/en/video/2025-hungarian-gp-hamilton-drives-off-circuit-as-verstappen-squeezes-past.1839443345175070091
Here’s how F1 Hungarian GP panned out