Max Verstappen mystified with ‘not driveable’ Red Bull after P7 in Italian GP qualifying

Max Verstappen said his Red Bull felt “not driveable in any corner” in qualifying for the Italian Grand Prix, with the reigning World Champion set to line up seventh on Sunday.

Verstappen and Red Bull team-mate Sergio Perez locked out the fourth row of the grid for Sunday’s race, with the McLaren duo of Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri almost seven tenths clear of the reigning World Champion in Q3.

Max Verstappen: Red Bull ‘just not driveable’ in Italian GP qualifying

Additional reporting by Thomas Maher and Sam Cooper

Verstappen lapped several tenths slower in the final part of qualifying than he managed in Q2, taking to team radio to explain that he had “no grip at all” on his tyres, and was well off the front-running pace on Saturday.

With his nearest challenger in the Drivers’ standings starting on pole, Norris now has a chance to make a dent into the Red Bull driver’s 70-point lead on Sunday, but when it came to what went wrong for him in qualifying, Verstappen was unsure about the exact causes of his issues in the top-10 shootout.

“For whatever reason in Q3 I picked up a lot of understeer on both tyre sets, and this is something that I don’t understand at the moment,” Verstappen told media including PlanetF1.com at Monza.

“It was just not driveable in any corner, so that’s something that is very weird.

Looking ahead to the Italian Grand Prix at Monza

👉 Winners and losers from the 2024 Italian Grand Prix qualifying

👉 F1 starting grid: What is the grid order for the 2024 Italian Grand Prix?

“I mean, going four tenths slower than we did in Q2 is not normal. I already had the same problem on the lap before on the other tyre set, so it was just not working for whatever reason.

“The balance difference that I had in Q3 was, we never experienced something like that before.

“It’s just weird that it suddenly happened because in Q1, Q2 it was not like that. But our car is extremely tricky to drive from entry to mid-corner. There’s a massive balance shift at the moment, so if you fix one thing, it creates another problem, so you have to be quite careful with that as well.

“It doesn’t help that we don’t have a Monza wing, so if you’re trimming your wing a lot, then that’s not the most efficient way of doing that, but the balance issues that I’m experiencing now I’ve had for a long time.”

For the race, the pace between the top four teams looked extremely close when the teams took in long-run simulations in free practice on Friday and Saturday, but Verstappen admitted the RB20 may not be in the mix if it does not show up as “balanced” on Sunday.

“The long runs, they might look good on paper, but it didn’t really feel like that, personally, and the problem is that when you don’t have a balanced car, of course, in the race, that is quite painful on tyres also,” he explained.

“So let’s see. Maybe with how the car is at the moment, it might be a little bit better for the race, but we’re also starting in the back of, let’s say, the top group. So we’ll just have to really see what happens in front of us.”

When it was put to him that he seems calm within himself given the situation in the World Championship is not sewn up, Verstappen took a pragmatic view on it all.

“Well, it’s just what it is,” he said.

“I mean, I’m trying to do the best I can, and more than that, I cannot do.”

Read next: Lewis Hamilton confesses ‘surreal emotions’ as Mercedes successor confirmed for F1 2025