Racing
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Max Verstappen will start only fifth for Red Bull’s home Austrian Grand Prix after crashing in the penultimate corner of Q3, with the four-time champion unable to explain a sudden snap from an upgraded RB22 that had looked quick enough to fight near the front.
At the 4.326-kilometer Red Bull Ring, Verstappen’s first Q3 lap of 1:06.475 briefly stood as the fastest time of the weekend before the Mercedes drivers responded. His final run was still improving when the rear stepped out at Turn 9 and sent him into the wall, ending a session that had suggested Red Bull’s Spielberg upgrade had finally given him a shot at the first two rows. George Russell went on to take pole.
Verstappen had already felt something was wrong earlier in the lap. Speaking after qualifying, he said: “I don’t know what happened. It’s very difficult to explain. In Turn 6 the car already felt very strange.” He said the car had snapped aggressively there, but he could still catch it. At the penultimate corner, that was no longer possible. “I turned the wheel and it just completely snapped. That is very strange. I can’t explain that.”
In comments to De Telegraaf, Verstappen’s frustration with the 2026 cars was even clearer. “I have to count to ten, sometimes to a hundred, before I talk about these incredibly complicated cars,” he said. “This time the car was completely out of control.” He added that Red Bull needed to check the rear wing “to see if it closed at the right moment or not,” because the crash felt “really strange” from the cockpit.
That made the result more painful for Red Bull because the car had taken a step in qualifying. Verstappen said that improvement had even come as a surprise after difficult practice sessions, but he still did not believe pole was realistic. Mercedes remained too strong in the final sector, and he felt third place was the limit. “I think third place was achievable,” he said.
That was the contradiction at the center of Red Bull’s Saturday. Two days earlier, Verstappen had described Austria as a key test of whether the team was moving in the right direction. Asked on Thursday about the importance of the upgrade package, he said: “It is crucial for us as a team to improve. We know we’re behind. We need to improve the car.” He had also made clear after Barcelona that Red Bull does not accept being “the fourth team.”
Verstappen’s message then was that Red Bull had made the easier gains since the start of the season, but not the final step needed to fight for wins. Austria qualifying seemed to support that view. The RB22 looked more competitive over one lap, yet it still produced the kind of unpredictable moment that Verstappen said he could not account for.
Team principal Laurent Mekies told Viaplay the team was still checking the data, but said the underlying pace was encouraging. He said “the front row was certainly possible” even if pole position was probably out of reach. That leaves Verstappen going into Sunday with evidence that Red Bull’s aggressive update has improved the car, but also with another reminder that he remains seventh in the championship and more than 100 points behind leader Kimi Antonelli.