Max Verstappen Calls Red Bull ‘Just a Little Average’ After Third Place Finish in Austin
Max Verstappen finished third at the Circuit of the Americas, crossing the finish line 17.5 seconds behind race winner Kimi Antonelli at the United States Grand Prix. Following victories in the previous two rounds in Malaysia and Singapore, the reigning world champion described his Red Bull RB22 as “pretty frustrating” and “just a little average” after battling tyre degradation, power unit inconsistencies, and radio issues throughout the race weekend.
Motorsport.com reported that Verstappen pointed to a flawed tyre strategy as a major factor in the team’s lack of pace. Mercedes driver Kimi Antonelli secured the victory by executing a clean one-stop strategy on hard compound tyres from pole position, while Red Bull and Ferrari both committed to a two-stop approach.
Reflecting on the tyre selection during the post-race press conference, Verstappen admitted that the Milton Keynes squad leaned too heavily on data from recent successful weekends.
“In hindsight, of course, it’s very easy to say, but for whatever reason, the softer compounds today were not really working that well. So, yeah, then also I think the way that we used our tyres in the order was wrong. Plus, I think at one point it was quite clear that the people on the harder compounds were finding a lot of grip, so I guess we also didn’t really react to that. Just probably sticking too much to our belief from the last two races, where the softer compounds were the fastest, and clearly here that didn’t work.”
When asked why Red Bull’s performance dropped relative to recent events, the Dutch driver explained that the RB22 lacked a distinct competitive edge on the Austin circuit.
“Because I think we are balanced as a car. We are not the fastest in high speed, we’re not the fastest in low speed, and I think maybe here you either need to be very fast in high speed or you need to be the quickest in low speed. When you’re none of it, you’re just a little bit average, and I think we were just a little bit average in the race,” Verstappen said.
While second place might have been achievable with an alternate strategy, Verstappen noted that power unit problems compounded the team’s struggles.
“Of course, if we chose different tyres, probably we could have maybe been second, but that’s always easy to say afterwards. Plus, when you have too many issues with the consistency of your power unit, then that already costs you free lap time. So it’s normal that you can’t execute everything to the limit or at least be at your best. There are still a lot of things that we need to look at and do better,” he stated.
Red Bull faces an extensive data analysis phase to determine why the softer tyre compounds underperformed compared to expectations, leaving the team with several questions to address before the next round of the championship.
