Red Bull’s Max Verstappen and Isack Hadjar are ruing a lack of “pace” after a lacklustre 2026 Chinese Sprint Qualifying.
Verstappen qualified eighth for the first sprint race of the season after he finished in that position in practice but only found 0.066 seconds between his quickest practice and SQ3 lap times, which left him 1.734s off pole-sitter, George Russell.
The four-time champion consequently post Sprint Qualifying felt that his team had lacked “great pace” across both sessions, which he put down to grip and balance issues.
“We have had low grip, which has been our biggest problem, and no balance unfortunately.”
Verstappen proceeded to explain that their largest time losses came in the corners and feels that this weekend is about damage limitation now.
“We are losing quite a lot of time in the corners and then, of course, this starts to trigger other little problems. The big problem for us is the cornering. We will need to go away and analyse what we can do ahead of tomorrow and figure out our main limitations and we will see how we go.”
Hadjar meanwhile finished 13th in practice with a 0.315s deficit to Verstappen, and then tenth in Qualifying but 0.469s behind Verstappen which he felt was “a positive” amidst confusion why he lost pace between sessions, and believes that he needs an improved car to compete for points tomorrow.
“We need a little bit more of everything to be competitive tomorrow, we struggled with grip today and our power wasn’t where we wanted it to be.”
The Frenchman also acknowledged that Red Bull’s pace deficit to McLaren and Ferrari had grown, which left him puzzled at the difference but he feels that anything can happen across the rest of the weekend.
“The gap to McLaren and Ferrari was bigger than last weekend, so we need to figure out why. There’s a still a lot to play for over the rest of the weekend.”
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