Max Verstappen was the slower Red Bull driver in a practice session for the first time in 2025 as he lamented an “undriveable” car on Friday at the Hungarian Grand Prix - where Red Bull seems in worse shape than any point this year.
The reigning Formula 1 world champion barely improved on his best time from FP1 in a frustrating FP2 session in which he complained repeatedly about his RB19’s balance.
Verstappen was 14th-fastest and more than a second off the pace in FP2, as Red Bull looked far less competitive than even on other bad Fridays - like Japan, or Canada, where on both occasions a big recovery turned its weekend around.
He was also more than three tenths slower than Tsunoda in FP2 at the Hungaroring, the first time since the same session in Abu Dhabi last year that he has been outpaced by a team-mate in practice (having been ahead in the 34 practice sessions in the interim).
At least some of that deficit seems to be down to engine modes as Tsunoda was clearly faster on the straights compared to Verstappen.
But he was also quicker than Verstappen through several corners, like the medium-speed Turns 5 and 9, and was equal through the fast right of Turn 11.
Long-run pace was also disappointing. Verstappen was slower than the McLarens, Ferraris and Mercedes - with Tsunoda around the same.
“Today was very tough,” Verstappen admitted. “Just really low grip feeling and not really a balance in the car.
“It's difficult to say what is the exact problem, nothing really worked, so this is something that we have to investigate overnight because so far it's not been our weekend.”
Verstappen said Red Bull needs to first understand “what is causing us to have such a big problem with the car”, while Red Bull’s technical director Pierre Wache also gave the impression this is worse than other Fridays this year the team has been able to rebound from.
“The car is not behaving as expected currently,” Wache said.
“We did some tests during both sessions today and nothing is responding as expected.
“Currently we are not competitive enough, so there is a lot of work to do and we are hoping we will find some good solutions for tomorrow."
If there was a hint of a silver lining it was that Tsunoda did not seem too displeased with the balance. He described that as “not the main issue” as “the grip that we normally should feel, we're lacking” - and felt that progress had been made on his side after a poor FP1 “but overall, as a team, we are struggling”.
“We changed a lot of things into the FP2,” said Tsunoda.
“I'm sure there's something that we can take positive from Max’s car and my car as well, so we just combine [from] each other.
“But I feel like we have to find a bit more the core limitation that we are probably missing, and we have to find out for sure into qualifying tomorrow.”
Red Bull warned for towel incident
Verstappen also faced a post-FP2 stewards’ investigation for an unusual incident.
When he left the pits on softs for his qualifying simulations, the first part of his outlap was very slow as he fidgeted around in the cockpit.
As he was completing the first sector, Verstappen drove to the right of the circuit and threw a towel out of the car. It was a face towel that had slipped from his lap to the side of the seat and Red Bull was unaware it was still in the car when it sent Verstappen out.
The unusual matter was investigated after the session and Red Bull was given a warning.
Max dispenses a towel from the cockpit 👀#F1 #HungarianGP pic.twitter.com/MVNPCvqyYP
— Formula 1 (@F1) August 1, 2025
The stewards determined that the towel “had the potential to have become lodged in the footwell and to interfere with the driver’s ability to fully control the car and that therefore the car was released in an unsafe condition”.
“The stewards consider this case to be distinguishable from a case where a hard (and therefore potentially dangerous) object is left in the cockpit and to be less severe than such a case,” they said.
“Hence a warning to the team is imposed.”
