Verstappen admits shock at P2 after troubled weekend

Max Verstappen smiled in parc fermé after the Hungarian Grand Prix but sounded far happier than he had over team radio. The second-placed finish was his third podium in four races, and came behind only race winner Lando Norris.

Asked what went through his mind on the final lap, Verstappen said: “‘How did I end up here?’ I was shocked. I’m actually still shocked.” Coming into Sunday the 28-year-old said he “didn’t expect to be on the podium.”

Car problems persisted all weekend

Verstappen and Isack Hadjar qualified outside the top five. Saturday sessions produced problems Verstappen described in the team’s post-session recap as “out of our control and quite unexpected,” ranging from degradation to aerodynamic losses. Oversteer was a constant pain point and the Dutchman felt the car got worse each lap.

Red Bull technical director Pierre Waché said Friday: “With this new car, you see a different problem every time you go to the track, when you put the car on the ground. We try to maximize it, but no confidence.” After second practice Verstappen was 0.692s off Lewis Hamilton, and 0.717s off Norris in third practice.

“We cannot make miracles and just make it step by step,” Waché said Friday.

Race recovery

Before the start Verstappen gained two spots thanks to grid penalties for Hamilton and Kimi Antonelli, and moved to third by the end of lap one, passing Charles Leclerc. Keeping the Ferraris behind proved hard as Hamilton was all over the rear of the Red Bull before the first stops.

Ferrari’s undercut initially worked and Hamilton was ahead when Verstappen rejoined on lap 14. Two laps later Verstappen made a late braking move at Turn 1 to retake the position. He said after the race his second stint was “a little bit more straightforward.”

Even with an early second stop and soft tyres, Verstappen remained in podium contention. Oscar Piastri’s retirement due to a gearbox issue helped, but he still described Sunday as “one of the hardest races of this year in terms of how I felt in the car, how I had to manage the balance as well, corner to corner.”

Hadjar said post-race having a drivable car “was not possible the whole weekend,” pointing to terrible downshifts. Team principal Laurent Mekies said: “If I look back to drivers’ feedback in Spa or in Austria, they would probably have said that the car was pretty much ballpark to how it should feel and to what it allows them to do. That was never the case this weekend.”

Verstappen summed up Red Bull’s priority: “We need to first find more overall performance. Then we need to fix our problems, where we sometimes just lose performance over a weekend, or even from the start of the race to the end.”