Max Verstappen did not hide his frustration after finishing third in the United States Grand Prix, despite claiming his tenth podium of the season.
Coming off back-to-back victories, the Red Bull driver had hoped to extend his momentum in Austin, but his race was disrupted by an ill-suited tyre strategy, power unit issues, a slow pit stop and fresh radio communication problems.
The Dutchman believes his team missed the mark on several key decisions and reckons a second-place finish might have been within reach with better execution.
Finishing third behind Kimi Antonelli and Charles Leclerc, Max Verstappen left the Circuit of the Americas feeling he had missed an opportunity to extend his strong run of results. The four-time world champion feels Red Bull failed to properly exploit the tyre characteristics, whilst accumulating technical issues that made his car particularly unpredictable.
Speaking immediately after securing his tenth podium of the season, Verstappen made no attempt to mask his disappointment, taking several swipes at his team’s calls. He was far from pleased to see Red Bull telegraph its two-stop strategy so blatantly!
“Pretty frustrating, to be honest. Yeah, it was just not a very good race for us.”
“I’ve had more enjoyable races. Not a lot really went well. The start wasn’t good, and managing the tyre choice wasn’t either. Soft, soft, medium… that wasn’t what was agreed. I don’t really understand why it played out like that.”
“Really, that wasn’t agreed. That’s precisely why I don’t understand it. Otherwise, everyone would have known we were going for a two-stop strategy.”
“And then I also had too many issues with the engine, though that was already the case in qualifying. It was really very inconsistent.”
“In one corner, there isn’t enough engine braking, which means the car just pushes on, and in the very next corner, it suddenly becomes really aggressive.”
“At another point, the gears weren’t shifting properly. I can’t explain it all. I’m not going to complain every single lap, but it simply wasn’t good. The weekend as a whole wasn’t good, and in the race, it was even worse.”
Verstappen also touched upon the pace of the hard tyres, which he never got the opportunity to run.
“They didn’t put them on my car,” the driver said. “That wasn’t what we had agreed on.”
“Everyone immediately realises you’re on a two-stop strategy the moment you bolt on the soft tyres again. We had agreed to use the medium tyres, so I’ll have to discuss it. I don’t know why things happened the way they did.”
The Red Bull driver stressed that the car’s inconsistency persisted throughout the entire weekend.
“The balance of the car wasn’t optimal, and there were too many issues,” he added. “It’s impossible to drive consistently when something changes every single time. Every lap, in every corner, the behaviour is simply not consistent.”
Asked about settling for third place rather than fighting Leclerc for second, Verstappen downplayed the difference: “Whether you finish third or fourth, it doesn’t change much.”
“When I was told how close Lewis Hamilton was behind me and how quickly he was catching up every lap, there was no point fighting Charles, because I would have ended up losing that position as well.”
Later, in the press conference, his tone cooled—but only by a notch. The Dutchman first pointed to the tyre choices made by Red Bull across the 56 laps. Over the previous two Grands Prix, the softer compounds had proven a particularly strong option. In Austin, however, the situation flipped, with the harder tyres ultimately proving better suited to the race conditions.
Verstappen believes Red Bull was too slow to read that shift.
“With hindsight, obviously, it’s very easy to say, but for one reason or another, the softer compounds didn’t really work very well today.”
“And then, I also think the sequence in which we used our tyres was wrong.”
“On top of that, I think at one point it was pretty clear that those running the harder compounds were finding a lot of grip. So I guess we didn’t really react to that.”
“We probably stuck too closely to what we thought after the last two races, where the softer compounds were the quickest, whereas here, that clearly wasn’t working.”
Strategy, however, was not the only factor that compromised his race.
An unpredictable power unit
Verstappen also encountered numerous difficulties with his power unit, whose behaviour varied from corner to corner and lap to lap—an inconsistency that prevented him from finding any consistent reference points at the wheel of his RB22.
“But besides that, we also had far too many issues with the power unit. Its behaviour was just very inconsistent through the corners: every lap, every corner, it reacted differently.”
“So you can’t find your rhythm, you can’t get the slightest consistency in how the car behaves.”
Compounding those issues was a slower-than-expected pit stop.
“I also had a slow pit stop, so yeah, there were too many things that simply didn’t go well.”
A Red Bull too average across all corner types
Asked about the performance swing between Austin and the previous races, Verstappen also offered an assessment of his car’s characteristics.
“Because I think our car is balanced. We’re not the quickest in high-speed corners, we’re not the quickest in low-speed corners.”
“And I think here, perhaps you needed to either be very quick in the high-speed corners, or be the quickest in the low-speed corners.”
“When you’re not the best in either of the two, you’re just a bit average, and I think we were just a bit average in the race.”
“Obviously, if we had chosen different tyres, maybe we could have finished second, but that’s always easy to say afterwards.”
He insisted, however, that the power unit difficulties would still have capped his potential.
“When you have too many consistency issues with your power unit, that already costs you lap time without you even having to do anything.”
“So it’s normal that you can’t execute everything on the limit, or at least be at your best level. There are still plenty of things we need to look into and improve.”
Despite his frustration, Verstappen took away a few positive memories from his race, notably the opening-lap battles. Asked about his start, he initially downplayed the difficulties encountered when the lights went out.
“I didn’t lose a position, so it wasn’t too bad. It’s normal. My start was normal. Just consistently…”
The Dutchman then detailed his battle with Charles Leclerc, who managed to get the upper hand by deploying his Ferrari’s electrical energy.
“Yeah, I think Charles used his boost between Turns 2 and 3, so he passed me around the outside, which was a nice move.”
“I told myself: ‘Okay, let’s settle down. There’s still a long race ahead of us’.”
“But then we had a nice battle between Turns 12 and 15, which was fun. It was a good fight on track.”
“I also had Lewis on my outside, I think, at Turn 6 on the opening lap, so I had a bit of work to do at that point.”
“But yeah, it all worked out fine, so it’s nice, you know, when you can race a bit like that. Obviously, Kimi pulled away a bit because of all that, but it doesn’t matter.”
Verstappen exasperated by radio problems
Red Bull’s struggles were not confined to strategy and car behaviour. Verstappen also suffered fresh radio communication issues—a subject that is beginning to seriously wear thin on him.
Asked about the fact that this type of incident seemed to have happened for the second time, the Dutch driver immediately corrected that impression.
“It’s not the second time. It’s already happened I don’t know how many times this year.”
“Maybe we should just start communicating in sign language. It would probably be cheaper as well.”
“It’s a disaster. Yeah, it’s a disaster. It’s really frustrating, to be honest.”
Having still believed on Saturday that he could extract more from his car and potentially fight for victory, Verstappen feels Red Bull failed to exploit its potential on Sunday.
Asked whether it would have been possible to secure a better result despite the technical issues, he was particularly clear.
“No, today we didn’t optimise much at all.”
“The issues obviously don’t help, but I also think the strategy we went for, with the tyre choices we made, simply wasn’t good.”
“So there are several things to analyse: why those tyres didn’t work the way we hoped, or why the others were better than expected.”
Verstappen wants to draw clear lessons from this experience.
“Yeah, it’s something we need to learn from. And then, like I already said, the slow pit stop doesn’t help either. Those are just seconds you throw out the window, aren’t they? And when you’re in a tight battle for second place, that hurts your performance.”
“So yeah, normally we are very good in those areas, but today, we weren’t.”
