Verstappen is furious: “Tyre degradation, various problems, we are unprepared! I have no words”

All of Max Verstappen’s disappointment

While Mercedes and Ferrari subvert the hierarchies of the past season and enjoy a start to 2026 as major protagonists, with the Silver Arrows clearly ahead in terms of pure performance, among the greatly disappointed of this first glimpse of the new era’s World Championship, there could only be Max Verstappen. And if in Melbourne Saturday immediately became an uphill battle with the Q1 accident that surprisingly ousted him from the top fight, it certainly cannot be said that in the Chinese GP things are going much better. In fact, the four-time world champion already struggled in the sprint qualifying, not going beyond a disappointing eighth spot on the grid, with the situation even worsening in Saturday’s 100 km short race.

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Words at the end of the Chinese GP Sprint Race

Protagonist of a terrible start, the Dutchman from Red Bull found himself fighting in the middle of the pack, having to recover with a series of overtakes, including a fratricidal fight with his young teammate Isack Hadjar. Inevitable, given the final ninth place which also implies a heavy zero in the “points collected” column, to note the bad mood of Max Verstappen, speaking to Sky microphones at the interview ring after the checkered flag of the Chinese GP Sprint Race: “At the moment I don’t have many words, to be honest. Everything that could go wrong went wrong. The start is a problem we need to fix, after which even in terms of balance we are nowhere”.

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“Then, normally we also have higher tire degradation on track, which is currently uncontrollable. And there are other problems with the car, so essentially we are not well prepared and we need to put everything together. The difficulties of this start of the season? Yes, they are a little more than what we would have expected”, concludes a rather pessimistic Max Verstappen already in the second weekend of the new era of Formula 1.

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