Max Verstappen admits Red Bull was “just a little average” in Austin

Outubro 28, 2026 lojamais44@gmail.com

Despite finishing on the podium, Max Verstappen was disappointed after the United States Grand Prix. Talking after the race, the Dutchman said his Red Bull team was “just a little average” as he faced the wrong tyre choice, power unit problems as well as radio issues.

The Dutchman finished third at the Circuit of the Americas, 17.5 seconds behind Kimi Antonelli, after winning the previous two races in Malaysia and Singapore.

Verstappen described the race as “pretty frustrating” and said the Milton Keynes outfit had relied too heavily on what had worked for it in recent weekends.

“In hindsight, of course, it’s very easy to say, but for whatever reason, the softer compounds today were not really working that well. So, yeah, then also I think the way that we used our tyres in the order was wrong.

“Plus, I think at one point it was quite clear that the people on the harder compounds were finding a lot of grip, so I guess we also didn’t really react to that. Just probably sticking too much to our belief from the last two races, where the softer compounds were the fastest, and clearly here that didn’t work,” he said in the post-race press conference.

Mercedes driver Kimi Antonelli converted an impressive pole position into a race win with a one-stop strategy on a hard tyre. Red Bull and Ferrari had both chosen the two-stop.

Asked why Red Bull’s pace had dropped off compared to recent races, Verstappen said the RB22 had no standout strength to lean on in Austin.

Andrea Kimi Antonelli, Mercedes, Max Verstappen, Red Bull Racing

Photo by: Sam Bloxham / LAT Images via Getty Images

“Because I think we are balanced as a car. We are not the fastest in high speed, we’re not the fastest in low speed, and I think maybe here you either need to be very fast in high speed or you need to be the quickest in low speed. When you’re none of it, you’re just a little bit average, and I think we were just a little bit average in the race.”

He believed second place was possible with a different strategy, but said the power unit had made life harder.

“Of course, if we chose different tyres, probably we could have maybe been second, but that’s always easy to say afterwards. Plus, when you have too many issues with the consistency of your power unit, then that already costs you free lap time. So it’s normal that you can’t execute everything to the limit or at least be at your best. There are still a lot of things that we need to look at and do better.”

He said the race had left Red Bull with more questions to answer.

“That’s a few things to analyse: why these tyres didn’t work as we expected, or why the other tyres performed better than expected. So, yeah, something to learn from.”