Max Verstappen admits to being concerned by Red Bull’s lack of competitiveness after finding himself locked in a race-long battle with the sister Racing Bulls team at his home Dutch Grand Prix.
The close competition between the two teams on track exposed troubling performance issues with Red Bull’s RB21 car, casting a shadow over the Milton Keynes-based outfit’s championship hopes.
Verstappen finished second in Zandvoort, behind McLaren race winner Oscar Piastri but just ahead of RB’s Isack Hadjar in fourth. However, the result – boosted by Lando Norris’ late retirement – did little to mask Verstappen’s concerns about Red Bull’s lack of race pace, which forced him to battle a team that should be a tier below.
“McLaren is on another level”
“Of course, happy to be on the podium, but in terms of speed it wasn’t good,” Verstappen told Dutch broadcaster Viaplay. “I think it was purely down to qualifying that I was third in the race, because in terms of speed it really wasn’t there.”
Despite finishing the race on softer tyres than the leading McLarens, Verstappen’s quickest lap was still 0.650s off Piastri’s best.
“McLaren is on another level,” he rued. “I don’t even compare myself with that.”
The Dutchman briefly snatched second from Lando Norris at the start, but from then on was hounded by Hadjar’s Racing Bulls car, the gap rarely stretching beyond three seconds in green-flag conditions.
“The whole race we were basically fighting with our sister team based on pure pace,” Verstappen said. “That shouldn’t be happening. That’s just not good. But in a way, we know that those problems are there in our car.”
Grip Woes Expose RB21’s Limitations
Red Bull’s struggles have been tied to the RB21’s narrow operating window and lack of adaptability. Verstappen admitted he avoided the hard tyre entirely at Zandvoort after poor feedback in practice.
“Absolutely no mechanical grip,” he explained. “But everyone else can drive on that tyre, except us. So that also means that something is just wrong. That’s why I used the soft and medium, those tyres give a bit more mechanical grip in slow corners, where we were struggling a lot.”
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The 27-year-old described how the RB21 forced him into compromises throughout the race.
“The car is just not fast enough. I also had to save a lot in those fast corners. While everyone goes through Turns 7 and 8 much faster, I have no grip.
“That’s obviously not good. Of course, in qualifying it was better over one lap, but this season the car is just not good in the race.”
While Red Bull faces what could be its first season without a title since 2020, Racing Bulls’ progress is a stark contrast. The Faenza-based squad has already collected 60 points this year – its best haul since 2021 – and is showing the kind of performance Verstappen believes his own team should comfortably be ahead of.
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