
Max Verstappen has admitted he could "get angry" about his car but that it won't change its performance. The Red Bull star reached Q3 at the Hungarian Grand Prix on Saturday, but will start Sunday's race from P8 after clocking a slower lap time than the likes of Gabriel Bortoleto, Lance Stroll and Fernando Alonso.
Verstappen hit the headlines during last season's Hungarian Grand Prix as he lashed out at his race engineer over the team radio after finishing in fifth place. Around a month or so earlier, the Dutchman's woes had begun, with Red Bull losing their edge over their rivals after a series of upgrades across the F1 paddock. This season, Verstappen is virtually already out of the title race, with McLaren duo Oscar Piastri and Lando Norris competing for silverware.
Verstappen was well off the pace during qualifying at the Hungaroring, with Ferrari star Charles Leclerc ultimately securing P1 ahead of Piastri and Norris, with Mercedes ace George Russell clocking the fourth fastest time.
And after the session, Verstappen explained: "Well, I can't change it. I can get angry, but that doesn't make the car go any faster.
"We knew beforehand that this would probably not be our best weekend, but this was even worse than expected. I was more outside the top 10 than in it this weekend. Put that way, it is still positive that I made it to Q3 in qualifying. But for us, of course, that's not good enough."
And Verstappen outlined his team's issues as he added: "Sometimes the balance of the car is not even that bad, but I have zero grip.
"Then you can't attack corners, not on the gas and you're just sliding. So I don't suddenly expect it to go a lot better in the race. It is a fundamental problem. We tried a lot of things this weekend, but nothing worked.
"Of course we have ideas where it comes from or how we might solve it, but we can't always express that.
"We will have to analyse everything. In the end, it doesn't hurt very much, because I'm not competing for the prizes anyway.
"But you try to grab a highlight every weekend. Like last week at Spa with winning the Sprint race. Here it doesn't work at all. I'm a second behind all the time and now in the end only 3.5 tenths.
"That's weird too. But I don't really care what others do. I have my own problems and that's bad enough."
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