At his home race in Zandvoort, Max Verstappen isn’t complaining about his flu symptoms; instead, he’s focusing on the shortcomings of his RB22
Max Verstappen is struggling with both his car and his physical condition at his home race in Zandvoort. According to his own account, the four-time world champion is battling flu-like symptoms and emphasizes: “I don’t have as much energy as usual,” he told the Dutch press after qualifying.
Nevertheless, this isn’t a problem for the 28-year-old behind the wheel. The RB22, on the other hand, isn’t exactly making his job any easier at what is, for now, the last Formula 1 Grand Prix on the Dunes Circuit. Sixth place in the Sprint and seventh place in qualifying are anything but encouraging for the orange-clad fan base in attendance.
“We made a lot of changes to the car after the Sprint, but none of them made a difference,” Verstappen explained to our sister site Motorsport.com. He was more than four-tenths of a second off Lando Norris’s fastest time.
“The car’s biggest problem,” says Verstappen, “is the balance. It just isn’t consistent through a corner, but it’s been like that all season. It’s worse on some tracks than on others.”
“Sometimes it depends on the asphalt, but also on the track layout. This certainly isn’t our best layout, but we just have to work on it. We can roughly guess which tracks it will go a bit better on, but we have to try to solve this overall.”
Rather than talking about setup issues, the four-time world champion emphasizes that these are fundamental design flaws in the RB22. “On this track, you have a few fast corners, and we’re lacking a bit there, too,” he explains.
“Basically, it’s like this: If you don’t have good balance, you can’t really attack the corners. And if you’re also lacking traction, you can’t really get out of the corners well. All of that costs time, of course.”
Speaking to Sky Sport F1, Verstappen summed up the RB22’s potential at Zandvoort as follows: “We’re just too slow. And if it’s dry tomorrow—even if qualifying was wet—you’re just too slow.”
So a home victory in Zandvoort’s farewell race isn’t likely, even though Verstappen has won here three times in his Formula 1 career. At least the Red Bulls should be pleased with Liam Lawson’s performance. After all, the Racing Bulls driver will start right behind Verstappen as a stand-in for Isack Hadjar, who is out due to injury.