Verstappen calls Red Bull’s Chinese GP pace ‘a disaster’ after torrid practice and sprint qualifying in Shanghai

Max Verstappen said Friday was “a disaster” after torrid practice and sprint qualifying sessions at the Chinese Grand Prix.

Verstappen’s Red Bull Racing was almost two seconds behind championship leader George Russell’s Mercedes as he finished in eighth place in both sessions in Shanghai.

Red Bull struggled for pace again on the second race weekend of the season, with its new in-house power units having replaced Honda as engine supplier.

It is also clearly far from getting to grips with the sweeping new aerodynamic and chassis regulations as Formula One enters an era of a 50-50 split between conventional and electrical power.

“The whole day has been a disaster pace-wise: no grip — I honestly think that is the biggest problem — no grip, no balance,” said an angry four-time world champion Verstappen, whose best lap was a colossal 1.734 seconds adrift of Russell.

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“(We are) just losing massive amounts of time in the corners and then of course because of that you start to trigger other little problems.

“But the biggest problem for us is that the cornering is completely out.”

His team-mate Isack Hadjar fared even worse. He was 10th, barely scraping into the top-10 shootout in sprint qualifying.

It prompted Red Bull team principal Laurent Mekies to apologise to Verstappen.

“Sorry, Max,” said Mekies over team radio at the end of the session.

“Tough one, a lot to learn. The weekend is still long, we need to learn from it. Let’s try again.”

Verstappen, who fought back from a qualifying crash in the opening race in Australia last weekend to finish sixth from 20th on the grid, was at a loss as to the way forward.

“I don’t know at the moment what we can do. We’ll see,” said the Dutchman.

Published on Mar 13, 2026