SHANGHAI, China — Max Verstappen complained Red Bull “never had anything this bad” after labouring to eighth on the grid for China’s sprint race.
Verstappen has been increasingly downbeat this year due to his dislike of F1’s controversial new hybrid engined cars.
Red Bull are also significantly off the pace with their newly built engine, which only appears to be worsening his overall mood.
On Friday, he qualified 1.7 seconds off George Russell’s sprint pole time, an enormous gap in a modern qualifying session.
“The car’s undriveable. We never had anything this bad, with everything together,” Verstappen said over the radio later in the session.
The growing unhappiness of Verstappen, who most agree is the best driver in F1 currently by some margin, should have alarm bells ringing for Formula 1.
The four-time world champion admitted on Thursday he feels “conflicted” by his future having repeatedly expressed his dislike for F1’s new hybrid engines, which feature a 50-50 split of combustion and electrical power.
Speaking on ahead of this weekend’s slate of races, Verstappen joked he was now practicing for F1 races by playing Mario Kart and collecting red mushrooms and blue shells.
The new engines have placed a huge emphasis on harvesting and deploying battery power throughout a race – during preseason testing, he said the new cars were like “Formula E on steroids”.
Verstappen’s criticisms of the new cars stretch back years — he was voicing concerns as early as 2023.
