Verstappen complains Red Bull balance 'all over the place'
A front row spot is by no means a bad result for anyone, but it's not the fourth consecutive home race pole position that Red Bull's Max Verstappen would have dearly loved to collect at Zandvoort.
Verstappen has been on pole every year since the Dutch Grand Prix returned to the F1 calendar in 2021, and on each occasion he's gone on to victory before legions of orange army fans in the grandstands.
But things have not gone to plan for him this weekend, with rain, gusty conditions and a curtailed final practice making it difficult to get the Red Bull dialled into the circuit and stay ahead of McLaren.
The crowds were convinced he had pulled something magical out of the bag when his final qualifying run saw him go top - but second slater, Lando Norris crossed the line with a 0.356s advantage over the three-time world champion.
“I never really felt comfortable," Verstappen said when interviewed after the end of the session in parc ferme. “Every run, there was always one or two corners where I felt like I was losing a lot of time.
“In Q3 I think the first lap wasn’t too bad," he said. "Then I tried to push it a bit more, but everything just seems very snappy, very on the edge, I would say.
“I had a bit of a moment in the [turn] 11-12, but that was also a bit my qualifying in general,” he continued. "With the gust of wind, it seemed like it was very sensitive for us.
“The car was really responding aggressively to it," he suggested. "That’s why I think every single run that I did was different. I just had a different balance every time. It made it very difficult."
It's not as though things had been looking stellar for Verstappen in the preceding rounds. He was only seventh in Q1 and came perilously close to missing the cut in Q2 when he stayed in the pits while other cars made late gains.
"I’d never really been in that top-five region," he acknowledged. “Of course, I was trying to save tyres a bit because I only had four sets, but I never really felt that I was in the fight for pole.
"I’m happy to be on the front row after Q1 and Q2," he said. “When you come out of qualifying on the front row, I think that’s okay.”
It's all a far cry from last year's dominant performance and the same that seemed to continue in the early races of 2024. But now it's been four races since Verstappen's last win and Red Bull looks to be falling behind McLaren.
"It’s three-tenths here, whatever it was," Verstappen said of the gap between himself and Norris today. "I think when you see the gap, it’s going to be very tricky [to catch up].
"Maybe it stabilises a bit tomorrow, but I guess we’ll find out," he shrugged. “It seems like Lando’s a bit happier in general - the driving and how he feels - while I’m a bit more all over the place with the balance."
Red Bull's recent upgrade package doesn't seem to have made much difference to the car's performance, and Verstappen admitted that he didn't know where the sort of gains they need are going to come from.
“I don’t know what the upcoming races will be [but] if you look at the last seven races, it’s just been a bit more difficult for us," he said.
“We are trying to understand and trying to just improve the situation, but it’s not a magic button switch that you turn. But yeah, we'll keep trying.”
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