'Very very poor' - British GP a harsh reality check for Red Bull
Formula 1’s British Grand Prix has proven to be a reality check for Red Bull after the high of Max Verstappen contending for victory in Austria last Sunday.
Isack Hadjar inflicted a rare intra-team qualifying defeat on Verstappen too, but they were both nowhere near the Mercedes and Ferrari drivers.
Hadjar was 0.635 seconds off pole position with Verstappen almost eight tenths adrift - his biggest margin to pole since he was knocked out in Q2 at Suzuka.
“Yesterday, of course, was already not great, today we didn't really seem to make an improvement on that side,” Verstappen said after qualifying.
“So it was pretty much the same, but at the same time also very slow on the straight.
“For whatever reason my side of the garage, from the first lap, was down on power, and of course around here when you're down on power you spend more time on the straight so you burn your battery more and that even has a bigger effect than the last sector where basically out of [Turn] 15 there is no power.
“So I just kept losing a lot on the straights, plus a bad balance, so it was just, yeah, very, very poor.”
Red Bull’s substantial Austrian GP upgrade helped Verstappen finish second there and he was right in the thick of the battle for victory, but in the sprint race at Silverstone Verstappen only went backwards, finishing sixth.
Verstappen said: “In the sprint race we were getting destroyed in the very high speed.
“I had George [Russell] behind me who was catching me in dirty air in the high speed, so that says quite a lot.
“But even in the low speed I'm just not happy with how the car has been handling the whole weekend, so it's a clear disconnect.”
Verstappen, who admitted he is getting "no enjoyment" from driving the 2026 generation of F1 cars around Silverstone, thanks to substantially reduced corner entry speeds, added he “tried a lot of different things throughout qualifying but it was just always the same”.
"There is a clear problem and that's something that also worries me of course for tomorrow, because there's actually no point to race like this.”
Will the next round at Spa be more of the same for Red Bull? “Yeah I think it will.” Verstappen replied. It'll probably not be a lot of fun, it's a long straight there."
‘Lacking pace everywhere’ - Hadjar
Having qualified five places behind Verstappen in sprint qualifying (albeit with a respectable 0.138s deficit), Hadjar qualified 0.147s ahead of Verstappen on Saturday.
Hadjar believed fifth place was the “max” achievable for the Red Bull.
“I feel good with my car. It's just that we're lacking a bit of pace everywhere,” Hadjar explained. “It's not one place that we are slow or one that we are very fast. It's just a bit everywhere.”
And he believes Red Bull’s “done a way better job than the last few weekends” with its power unit deployment.
