Max Verstappen (Red Bull Racing/8th): “Not good enough!”, a blunt assessment

The race weekend at the Baku City Circuit actually got off to such a promising start for Max Verstappen and Red Bull Racing. But then, in the decisive qualifying session, everything went against Verstappen. He had major problems. In the end, he could only manage 8th on the grid, one and a half seconds behind George Russell (Mercedes) on pole. Yet Verstappen had been the fastest in FP3 that morning.

After the session, he was clearly frustrated: “The whole qualifying session just didn’t go as it should have done. Right from Q1, my engine was half a second behind my team-mate’s on the straights, and we can’t explain why. You’re simply at a disadvantage.”

Verstappen had been the fastest in the third practice session on Friday morning, and he had also been the closest challenger to the Mercedes in the first two practice sessions on Thursday. Verstappen: “Then in Q3, on my middle lap – which is normally a good lap – as I was coming out of the last corner, i.e. Turn 16, my battery simply hadn’t charged to 100 per cent. So I had to abort the lap, which means you lose tyre temperature, and that’s disastrous here. I tried to warm the tyres up as best I could and gave it my all again on the final lap, but as I was lagging behind in top speed and there was a yellow flag ahead of me because of Lando, that’s just the result.” Lando Norris messed up his own lap shortly before the end, triggering a brief yellow flag period.

The Dutchman summed it up: “It’s just not good enough. We’ve driven really well all weekend, the car felt good, and then we had so many problems in qualifying. It’s just not good enough.”

Pole position was probably out of the question anyway; George Russell was simply too dominant for that. He was eight-tenths of a second ahead of Charles Leclerc in second place. Verstappen: “Looking at George’s lap, I don’t think we’d have been in the running for pole, but there’s a big gap behind him, and we should have slotted in there without any trouble. But when you have so many problems, you don’t deserve to be up there. We need to be more resilient and get these things under control.”

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Yet the statistics at the Baku City Circuit actually favour Verstappen: the record race winner on the streets of Baku is, in fact, Max Verstappen (alongside his former team-mate Sergio Perez). Both have won twice. Red Bull Racing is by far the most successful constructor in Baku with five victories (2 by Verstappen, 2 by Perez and 1 by Daniel Ricciardo). That said, he secured only one of those two victories (in 2025) from pole position. Starting from eighth on the grid, however, it’s likely to be more than a challenge.