Max Verstappen qualified 16th for the 2025 Brazilian GP weekend, which seemingly infuriated his dad, Jos Verstappen, who was present in the Red Bull garage during the qualifying session. After seeing that his son was knocked out in Q1, the senior Verstappen could be seen walking off from the garage in an expression of frustration.
Arriving into the Brazilian GP weekend, many had touted the reigning champion to close the gap to the papaya duo in the standings. However, the Red Bull RB21 started throwing tantrums, and with only a solitary practice session for drivers to utilize during a sprint race weekend, the Austrian giant didn’t get enough time to dial out the setup of the car.
This led Verstappen to qualify a subpar sixth for the sprint race and finish the 24-lap event in fourth. He had hoped to move up the order, but the team had seemingly experimented way more with the car in an attempt to curb the RB21’s woes that they went overboard, leaving Verstappen to tame an angry bull.
Due to this, the reigning champion was knocked out in Q1 and was left frustrated. But, this frustration was more pronounced in the Red Bull garage, as his father stormed off to another area in the team’s garage:
Meanwhile, Max Verstappen will start 16th for the Brazilian GP if he doesn’t take up a pit lane start for changing any PU elements on his car, or if any driver ahead of him doesn’t have to accommodate for an unforeseen penalty.
Max Verstappen was dejected after a torrid qualifying session for the Brazilian GP
In the past five race weekends, Max Verstappen had brought the RB21 to the top step of the podium with some glaring performances. However, to do the same in Interlagos, he might require a miracle as the Red Bull doesn’t seem to have the face in it to fight for the race win come the raceday.
This disappointment could be interpreted from his post-qualifying comments, as he said (via RN365):
“We need to understand what our problems are, first of all. It’s not been good. We don’t really understand why it’s going this way. There’s just no grip. We changed a few things on the car, and it didn’t work, so that’s something we need to figure out because nothing really seemed to work, and we just don’t understand… Something is clearly not working for us, even with the changes in the setup. Normally, you would feel some kind of reaction, but there wasn’t. Something is just really off.”
“We can forget about that. From where we are starting, it’s not going to work, and with these kinds of performances, forget about it.”
Max Verstappen currently has a 39-point deficit to the drivers’ championship leader, Lando Norris.
Edited by Geetansh Pasricha
