HUNGARIAN GP QUALIFYING : RED BULL THE DISAPPOINTMENT OF THE WEEKEND

The top 10 of this qualifying session is completed by Max Verstappen, Russell will even start ahead of Red Bull Alex Albon, only thirteenth in qualifying!

Hungarian GP qualifying Red Bull the disappointment of the weekend – well actually disappointment of the season so far – has been Red Bull.

I really believed it was coming into this season with a shot at the championship but in reality, as a team, it has thrown it away.

In pre-season testing at Barcelona, the car looked very nervous to drive. In Austria, over the two race weekends there, it looked nervous to drive and again in Hungary just the same.

No progress over three weekends means you are going backwards and the developments that it has thrown at the car has confused it even further.

I stick by my earlier analysis that the balance shift with steering lock is confusing the driver and they don’t know which direction to go in to get consistency over a lap.

Red Bull’s performance level in Hungary is potentially not seventh-place bad, what with Verstappen managing a lap 0.014s slower than his best in the very end of Q3 on used tyres – which suggests the session wasn’t entirely maximised.

But this is not much of an exculpatory factor for the RB16, and certainly not much of a basis to suggest Verstappen underperformed. The car has not looked great to drive in Hungary, which means some laptime being left on the table is inevitable – and however much Verstappen left, he’s still extracting a lot more from it than team-mate Albon.

And though there will be better weekends as far as car balance is concerned, Verstappen could be forgiven for wondering whether this car can ever be as quick as the Mercedes W11, or whether there’s any reason to expect 2021 will be any different.

Verstappen remains Red Bull’s prized possession. He’s under contract through 2023, but his previous deal was widely reported to contain performance-based exit clauses.

If this one does, too, being beaten not only by Mercedes but by Racing Point and an out-of-sorts Ferrari is probably a great way to trigger those clauses. And even if it doesn’t have them, Red Bull would be kidding itself if it thinks it can hang on Verstappen much longer and keep his morale at an acceptable level without providing him a title calibre car.

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HUNGARIAN GP QUALIFYING : RED BULL THE DISAPPOINTMENT OF THE WEEKEND HUNGARIAN GP QUALIFYING : RED BULL THE DISAPPOINTMENT OF THE WEEKEND