Red Bull Racing appears completely adrift. Where Max Verstappen once seemed capable of mounting a late title charge, the RB21 has suddenly reverted into the nightmare it once was, and the team compounded matters with a major error.
“It's fair to say we took some risks before qualifying to try to see if we could put the car in a better place, and it obviously went in the opposite direction. It's sometimes the price you pay when you take a risk.”
Those were the words of Red Bull Racing team boss Laurent Mekies even before qualifying had finished. For Red Bull, however, qualifying was effectively already over. Both Yuki Tsunoda and Verstappen failed to progress beyond Q1 after a gamble that spectacularly backfired.
For years, Red Bull was known for its ability to fine-tune the car across a weekend. Time and again Verstappen would look off the pace on Friday, only to emerge among the frontrunners by Saturday and Sunday. For the first time in a long while, the team failed to find its way back to the front.
Verstappen adopts Tsunoda’s setup
The RB21 was poor on Friday and continued to struggle during the sprint qualifying and the sprint itself. Verstappen fought with the balance of his car and knew the team needed to search for a better setup ahead of qualifying and the Grand Prix. Red Bull, however, went down the wrong path.
Tsunoda had run the sprint with a different configuration and reported feeling more comfortable. The team decided to steer Verstappen in the same direction, with disastrous consequences.
Where the Dutchman had previously been strong in sectors one and three, that advantage vanished entirely. Had the weakness in sector two been resolved, the trade-off might have been acceptable, but it remained. The result was clear: even Verstappen could not haul the RB21 out of Q1.
Red Bull now faces little choice but to overhaul the car’s setup completely. Such a move would force Verstappen to start from the pit lane, though that is hardly worse than beginning from P16. It could also present an opportunity to fit a new engine, potentially aiding him in future races.
Yet Verstappen now needs a miracle if he is to retain any hope of the 2025 title. The Dutchman has already admitted that hope has faded after this qualifying session. While he famously won from P17 in 2024, those were very different conditions. With Sunday’s race expected to be dry, he will need a remarkable drive merely to finish in the points.
And with that, the championship appears to be slipping away. Verstappen and Red Bull seemed to have rediscovered their form after the summer break, with victories in Monza, Baku, and Austin. But that now seems to have been a false dawn. Red Bull finds itself back at square one, while McLaren once again leads at the front.
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