Verstappen reveals fix behind Miami front row

Max Verstappen put Red Bull back on the front row in Miami by qualifying second, and said the turnaround from being more than a second off the pace at the previous race was “really incredible” after a steering fix and a major update package finally made the RB22 driveable again.

Verstappen will start alongside pole-sitter Kimi Antonelli after finishing within about two tenths of the Mercedes, a result that far exceeded Red Bull’s expectations at a track where the team arrived simply hoping to get closer to the top three. After finishing fifth in Saturday’s sprint, he said the original target for the weekend would normally still have meant only seventh on the grid.

“Of course I didn’t expect this either,” Verstappen said after qualifying. “The goal for this weekend was to get a bit closer to the top three teams, but normally that would still mean P7 on the grid. So, it went a lot better than expected in this qualifying session.”

The biggest change, he said, was Red Bull finally solving a steering problem he had been reporting since winter testing. Asked what had mainly unlocked the improvement, Verstappen said: “Most of it is in the steering system, where something was clearly wrong before. They have finally been able to fix that, so now I can at least steer normally again.”

He said he had raised the issue “from the very first lap in the Barcelona test,” but that it was difficult to isolate because it was tied to more than the steering alone. “It was not as simple as it seems,” he said. “A lot of things come together, also in terms of aerodynamics. In the end, the whole suspension is designed to be aerodynamically optimal as well, so there are always a lot of complicating factors involved.”

That breakthrough changed the way the RB22 behaved beneath him. Verstappen said that through the opening three races “nothing really worked” and that he felt “like a total passenger in the car,” with the balance shifting unpredictably from understeer to snaps and even changing from one session to another without setup changes. In Miami, that was replaced by a car he could finally lean on.

“So many things were not working up until this weekend,” Verstappen said. “A few things have changed, and it made it a lot more comfortable to drive. I feel a lot more confidence and I don't feel like I'm a passenger anymore in the car.” He added: “I can finally drive how I want to drive.”

The steering fix was only part of the jump. Verstappen said it made the car more comfortable and gave him more feeling, but Red Bull also brought a substantial upgrade package that included heavily revised sidepods, a new floor and its own version of the Macarena wing. The combined effect was a huge step compared with Japan, where he failed to reach Q3.

Verstappen said the gain was already clear in race trim during the sprint, when he could at last stay with the cars ahead instead of watching them disappear. “I could finally follow the cars ahead of me instead of them just pulling away and not seeing them again,” he said. “To be on the front row coming from over a second behind in the previous race is really incredible. It's massive.”

Red Bull team principal Laurent Mekies told Viaplay the changes were delivering what the team had hoped. “The updates work,” Mekies said, after what he called “five quite intensive weeks” in Milton Keynes following a poor start to the season. He said Red Bull had carried out a serious investigation because neither Verstappen nor Isack Hadjar had a car they could really push in the opening rounds.

Mekies said the response had come from both sides of the operation. “It is a joint effort, both on the chassis side and the engine side,” he said. He also made clear Miami was only an early sign of recovery, not a complete solution. “We know it is not enough. We know that we haven’t solved everything yet, but it has certainly helped us back in the right direction.”

That is the real significance of Verstappen’s front-row start. Red Bull has not claimed to have cured the RB22, but after three races in which its lead driver said he could barely trust what the car would do, Miami offered the first evidence that the team has identified the core problems and given him a platform he can attack with again.