A Saturday to forget
There’s a bad atmosphere at Red Bull. After Max Verstappen secured two podiums in the last three races, there was curiosity to see if the Milton Keynes team would be able to challenge Mercedes and Ferrari more closely in Hungary, but this was not the case, quite the opposite. McLaren’s step forward, which even secured pole position with Lando Norris, pushed Red Bull into the role of the fourth force on track with no apparent possibility of getting closer to their rivals. Verstappen, as usual, criticized the car’s performance without mincing words, but this time harsh words towards the team also came from his teammate Isack Hadjar.
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Hadjar following Max’s lead
The Frenchman appeared decidedly gloomy in the mixed zone and did not hold back his disappointment in front of the microphones after securing eighth position in Q3, six tenths behind Lando Norris’s pole position: “It was really very disappointing. There’s not much to say, actually. It’s just that we haven’t made any progress throughout the weekend. That’s what we can say at the moment. We are the fourth fastest car, so it’s not good“, commented Hadjar.
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According to Hadjar, Red Bull was not even able to take advantage of more favorable weather conditions during qualifying, suggesting that the final result could have been even worse: “The conditions keep changing, and so [what we found] is a very different track compared to Friday, and that should also help us a bit, as there was less wind. But we are out of the game: if qualifying had taken place in worse conditions, we would not have had any chance”, concluded Red Bull’s #6.
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