Max Verstappen experienced an extremely complicated sprint at the Chinese Grand Prix. The four-time champion of the world even admits to being left speechless by the many difficulties encountered by Red Bull.
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The start of the 2026 F1 season is proving particularly tricky for Max Verstappen and Red Bull Racing. After an already complicated first Grand Prix in Australia, the Austrian team hoped to bounce back during the Chinese weekend. But the first signs observed at the Shanghai circuit were not reassuring.
Difficulties appeared as early as Sprint Qualifying. Verstappen complained of an unstable car, difficult to exploit, as well as particularly brutal gear shifts. In these conditions, the Dutchman could do no better than eighth on the starting grid.
A result all the more frustrating as the four-time champion of the world was even outpaced by Pierre Gasly at the wheel of his Alpine. The team had explained before the race that this sprint would mainly serve as a learning session, with qualifying and the Grand Prix remaining the priorities of the weekend. But the situation turned out to be much more complicated than expected.
A catastrophic start for Verstappen
The sprint race quickly turned into a nightmare for Verstappen. As the lights went out, the Red Bull driver experienced a particularly problematic start, even coming close to stalling.
This hesitation cost him dearly as the Dutchman found himself propelled to the back of the pack, dropping to 20th position. In such a short sprint, such a loss of places inevitably complicates any attempt at a comeback.
Despite everything, Verstappen managed to limit the damage by gradually regaining several positions over the laps. At the finish, he finally climbed back to ninth place, falling just short of the points.
Isack Hadjar’s complicated race
The weekend was no simpler for his teammate Isack Hadjar. The Frenchman had nevertheless managed to maintain an interesting position in the top 10 at the start.
But on the first lap, he was hit by Kimi Antonelli, who was trying to make up for a missed start with a particularly ambitious maneuver. The incident caused significant damage to the Red Bull driver’s car.
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The car’s floor was seriously damaged, which heavily affected Hadjar’s performance for the rest of the race. With the added factor of heavy degradation of his soft tires at the end of the event, the Frenchman finally finished far from the top 10, in fifteenth place.
Verstappen distraught in the face of problems
After the race, Verstappen admitted to being particularly surprised by the scale of the difficulties encountered by his team. The Dutch driver admitted he struggled to find the words to describe such a chaotic race.
“Honestly, I don’t have many words for the moment, he confided. Everything that could go wrong went wrong.”
The reigning world champion notably pointed to a global car behavior problem: “The start is obviously something we need to fix, but then the balance of the car was completely unstable.”
Tire management also posed a serious problem for Red Bull: “We probably had the highest degradation of all the drivers, which was simply uncontrollable.”
Finally, Verstappen believes that several technical aspects were simply not ready for this sprint: “In addition, some other elements of the car were not, I would say, well prepared.”
Red Bull must react quickly
Faced with this worrying observation, the Dutchman’s message is clear: the team must quickly correct its problems to prevent this situation from happening again.
“We just need to get our affairs in order,” he concluded.
For Red Bull, the challenge now is to find quick solutions to return to a level of performance capable of competing with the leading teams at the Shanghai circuit.
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