Max Verstappen (Red Bull Racing) in Baku: “The car is really s***…”

A year ago in Baku, Max Verstappen dominated the race: pole position, a start-to-finish victory and the fastest lap of the 2025 season – you can’t do much better than that.

At the time, the Dutchman was in the midst of a breathtaking comeback to prevent the McLaren drivers, Oscar Piastri and Lando Norris, from winning the title. It almost worked – after the World Championship finale in Abu Dhabi, Super-Max was just two measly points behind Norris.

Twelve months later, Max often finds himself in only the fourth-best car (behind Mercedes, McLaren and Ferrari), which doesn’t stop him from securing one podium finish after another (since Austria: five race finishes, five times on the podium).

In the first Baku practice session in 2026, Verstappen was second fastest behind the Englishman George Russell; the aim was to build on that in the second 60-minute practice session.

At first, however, there was no sign of that, because after just over five minutes, the 71-time Grand Prix winner came over the radio saying: “The car’s really s***…”

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The curious thing was that Verstappen was leading at that point on medium tyres.

On the fast final section of the track, almost two kilometres long, Verstappen was only losing an average of just under two tenths to the Mercedes-powered cars.

Verstappen slipped back behind Norris for a while, then behind Russell, before Max moved back into P1 after a quarter of an hour, 45 thousandths of a second ahead of the Briton.

When the red flag came out after 18 minutes (Arvid Lindblad had taken a knock on the right-hand side whilst entering the old town), the clock kept ticking relentlessly. The enforced break lasted eleven minutes.

After 35 minutes, Verstappen made an attempt on soft tyres; Max was now in P3 behind Russell and Leclerc.

Max set the fastest time in the first sector, but was three tenths behind Russell in the second; on balance, he finished second behind the Englishman, four tenths adrift. Russell then managed to improve his time, whilst championship leader Antonelli moved up, pushing Max down to P3.

The endurance runs are still difficult to interpret, but Verstappen is among the best here too. We’ll have a clearer picture in the third practice session.

The second free practice session ended for Verstappen with a (harmless) braking error at Turn 15.