Max Verstappen called his Austrian Grand Prix second place “extremely positive.” He’s not wrong. He’s also glossing over the uncomfortable detail that his car was coming apart beneath him, and that Red Bull handed George Russell the win with a strategy call that aged badly.
A Car That Was Coming Undone
Verstappen was measured in his post-race comments to David Coulthard, noting that the Red Bull RB22 “picked up a few issues” which “prevented me from finding that nice rhythm.” Elsewhere, he was considerably less diplomatic. Brake problems dogged him for the entire 71-lap race. From the halfway point, the rear suspension effectively stopped working, leaving the car bouncing viciously and refusing to absorb the kerbs. “You lose traction. The car bounces badly, so you just can’t go over the kerbs properly,” he explained. By the closing stages, the rear tyres were simply destroyed.
Given that Red Bull rebuilt virtually the entire front of his RB22 after Saturday’s qualifying shunt, a few gremlins appearing mid-race is perhaps unsurprising. What should concern the team far more is that those issues almost certainly cost them a victory at their home circuit.
The Strategy Call That Finished It
After twenty laps of hard running, Verstappen had hauled the gap to Russell down to under a second. An undercut was there for the taking. Red Bull hesitated. Russell pitted on lap 44; Verstappen stayed out, allegedly to secure fresher rubber for the final stint. By lap 49, he was reportedly on the radio warning his tyres were finished. He pitted, emerged eleven seconds behind Russell, and with five fewer laps of tyre advantage than his rival. The race was over at that precise moment.
Progress, But the Problems Are Real
To his credit, Verstappen didn’t sulk. He joked in the post-race green room that he had managed “not a terrible start for once,” which, given Red Bull’s dismal record off the line this season, genuinely counts as progress. His early wheel-to-wheel battles with Lewis Hamilton were genuinely entertaining, and the raw pace on display confirmed the new update package is a meaningful step forward. He also brushed off bruised knees from Saturday’s crash with characteristic understatement: “It wasn’t great, but today was okay.”
The underlying story, though, is that Russell won this race as much as Red Bull gave it away. Reliability gremlins, a rear end that gave up halfway through, and a pit wall that blinked at the critical moment. Verstappen can call it extremely positive all he likes. Until Red Bull fix all three problems, the victories will keep belonging to someone else.
