Max Verstappen spent his home race looking like a man who should have been in bed, not a car. Now, days later, he’s finally admitted just how bad it was, calling the whole experience at Zandvoort simply ‘awful’.
The Red Bull driver had been fighting flu-like symptoms all weekend at the Dutch Grand Prix, and it showed. He looked drained in the paddock, qualified a distant seventh for his own home race, and then binned it into the barriers at the banked final corner on the opening lap, on a track that was still greasy from earlier rain. A red flag followed. It was not the homecoming Zandvoort or Verstappen wanted, and now we know illness was quietly making a bad weekend even worse.
The Illness Nobody Really Talked About Until Now
At the time, the story was the crash. Verstappen losing the rear at the final corner, spearing into the barrier, red flag out, race barely started. What got lost in the noise was that the four-time champion had been under the weather the entire weekend, and by his own admission, well after it too.
Speaking to media ahead of the Italian Grand Prix at Monza, Verstappen was asked directly how he’d been feeling in the days following Zandvoort. His answer left little room for spin.
“I felt good in terms of the impact, because it was the safety barrier. So that was the first time that I did that. It actually did its job really well.” – Max Verstappen, quoted by RacingNews365
Reading between the lines, that’s a driver who was in far worse shape than the team let on at the time. Nobody at Red Bull was rushing to tell the world their four-time champion was under the weather during his own home Grand Prix. Drivers rarely admit weakness mid-weekend, and teams certainly don’t advertise it, because it invites exactly the kind of questions that follow now: was he even fit to be racing?
A Crash That Could Have Been Worse
Whatever state Verstappen was in physically, the crash itself was a reminder of how quickly a damp Zandvoort weekend can turn nasty. Losing the car at the final corner, on the banking, is not a gentle off. It’s the kind of accident that ends far worse than a red flag and a bruised ego. That the barrier did its job, in Verstappen’s own words, is at least one thing Red Bull and the FIA can be relieved about.
It also underlines something Formula 1 doesn’t dwell on enough: these drivers are human, and human bodies don’t stop being human just because there’s a championship on the line. Verstappen sitting seventh on the grid at his home race, well below where Red Bull would want their lead driver, starts to look a lot more understandable once you factor in he was fighting illness the entire time.
No Relief in Sight at Monza
This being 2026 Red Bull, the good news stops there. Zandvoort wasn’t just a physical struggle, it was a performance one too. McLaren, Mercedes and Ferrari were comfortably quicker across both the sprint and the Grand Prix, leaving Red Bull scrapping for scraps rather than podiums. Verstappen is hoping for an improvement at Monza, but he isn’t exactly radiating optimism about it.
Asked what to expect from the low-drag, energy-management-heavy demands of Monza, Verstappen didn’t sugarcoat it.
“Really painful. It’s enormously energy-inefficient. But I don’t want to be too negative about it either. It is what it is. I’ve mentally accepted it and just prepared for a weekend that plays out a bit differently.” – Max Verstappen
He added that pushing flat out simply won’t be an option: “You just can’t push flat out. We simply have to be careful with the throttle, let’s put it that way.” That’s not a driver bracing for a fight at the front, that’s a driver managing expectations downward before a wheel has even turned.
Numbers That Back Up the Gloom
It’s worth remembering Verstappen sits sixth in the championship on 112 points, some way adrift of the two Mercedes drivers and the Ferrari duo fighting at the sharp end, and 130 points behind championship leader Kimi Antonelli. Red Bull as a constructor are fourth, comfortably behind Mercedes, Ferrari and McLaren. None of that points to a team about to turn things around at a circuit that plays to their car’s weaknesses rather than its strengths.
Red Bull’s Monza weekend already has a twist before a single lap has been driven, with Verstappen set to miss FP1 as the team runs a driver change. That’s a separate headache, but it fits the pattern: a difficult few weeks compounded by circumstances Red Bull can’t fully control, whether that’s illness, car performance, or now a rejigged Friday schedule.
What Comes Next
Practice at Monza gets under way on Friday 4 September at 10:30 UTC, with qualifying on Saturday at 14:00 UTC and the race on Sunday at 13:00 UTC, check the calendar for your local time. Verstappen may be physically recovered now, but recovery from illness and recovery in the championship standings are two very different problems, and only one of them has a cure in sight.
If Verstappen’s own words are anything to go by, Monza won’t be the weekend where Red Bull’s fortunes turn around. He’s not even pretending it will be. When your own driver is pre-emptively lowering expectations before practice has started, that tells you plenty about where the team really thinks it stands.
