Max Verstappen mentioned that the setup of his car worsened before the Baku qualifying session.
World champion Max Verstappen revealed that the reason behind his lackluster qualifying performance at the Formula 1 Azerbaijan Grand Prix was a setup change that caused his Red Bull car to bounce. Verstappen appeared to be competitive against Ferrari and McLaren throughout the weekend, but during qualifying, he couldn’t extract a good lap from his Red Bull RB20.
The Dutch driver, for the first time in 33 races since last year’s Miami Grand Prix, was outqualified by his teammate Sergio Perez and finished sixth, 0.658 seconds behind pole-sitter Charles Leclerc.
According to Verstappen, Red Bull overdid a setup change before qualifying, which affected the balance of his car and caused it to bounce at the rear.
Verstappen said, “As soon as I went out in Q1, I felt like the car had taken a step backward.”
“We made some changes, and the car became incredibly unpredictable and difficult to drive.”
“This caused a lot of bouncing at the rear while entering and exiting corners. It went relatively well in Q2, but the car didn’t feel right, and I couldn’t extract the maximum. I had too much understeer, and that’s something you don’t want on a street circuit.”
“Of course, I’m a bit disappointed because you always try to do better. Unfortunately, this time we went too far.”
“I lost my first lap in Q3 at the final corner. You still have one lap to improve your time, but I couldn’t find that feeling in the car. We made some changes and know what went wrong. It’s very frustrating.”
When asked if the car was still a “beast” like it was in Monza, he replied: “No, no, we’ve developed the car. But now we tried to make a few things better with the setup, and unfortunately, things went the other way.”
F1’s parc ferme rules mean that Red Bull is limited in the changes they can make before the race, leaving Verstappen pessimistic about breaking his six-race winless streak. “The car doesn’t feel great at the moment, so we’ll see,” Verstappen concluded.
Verstappen’s situation doesn’t overshadow Perez’s strong qualifying result, which confirms the positive signs from practice that the Mexican driver could turn his luck around at one of his favorite circuits this season. Perez, who qualified 4th, said, “The team did an incredible job making improvements to fix the issues we’ve been facing.”
“The car gave me confidence. If I had come here with the car I’ve had all season, I would have achieved a similar result.”
“We went through a very tough period, but I think this is the biggest progress we’ve made with the car since the start of the year.”
“I hope this can reflect in tomorrow’s race pace. The car’s balance is definitely moving in the right direction,” he said.
