Max Verstappen did not mince his words after qualifying sixth in Hungary, spinning on his final lap and then delivering one of his most pointed attacks on Red Bull yet. Not angry in a vague, diplomatic way. Genuinely, visibly furious.
‘The Whole Qualifying Was Rubbish’
Speaking after the session, Verstappen made no attempt to protect Red Bull from the fallout. The issue, he said, started in FP3 and never went away.
“For me, the whole qualifying was just rubbish. From the third practice session we kept losing downforce from the car, and it just kept going, into qualifying too. Absolutely worthless.” – Max Verstappen
He then added the line that really stings: “There’s always something else that doesn’t work, or breaks, or whatever. I’m done with it, for now.” Four-time world champion, seventh in the drivers’ standings, increasingly out of patience.
An Unmanageable Car
The spin on his final Q3 lap was not a random moment of driver error. Verstappen was already half a second off the pace before he even reached the final corner. When asked what specifically went wrong with the aerodynamics, he was blunt.
“I don’t know. They can see that something is going wrong with the aero again, that we’re losing downforce. The car is just undriveable. You turn in and it breaks away completely. Take wing off and you get understeer. Add wing back and it breaks away again. It’s impossible.” – Max Verstappen
His teammate Isack Hadjar also spun in Q2, which tells you this is not a Verstappen problem. It is a Red Bull problem.
Red Bull’s Structural Mess
The Hungaroring was supposed to suit the RB22. Friday’s practice sessions told a different story, and Saturday confirmed it. Red Bull remain the fourth-fastest team in Hungary, over half a second behind McLaren and Ferrari. Verstappen was already P7 in FP3, and qualifying only made things worse.
Meanwhile, Lando Norris took pole by 0.012 seconds from Lewis Hamilton, with Charles Leclerc completing the top three. The gap between Norris and Verstappen was not a rounding error. It was a statement about where these two teams currently stand.
What Sunday Holds
When asked whether the race would be a long afternoon, Verstappen shrugged and said simply: “We’ll see.” That is not optimism. That is a man preparing himself for more of the same.
Red Bull have flickered in Monaco and Austria, but Hungary has exposed the same underlying fragility again. At some point, “something always breaks” stops being bad luck and starts being a pattern. Verstappen knows it. He is just no longer pretending otherwise.
