{"id":600429,"date":"2025-11-29T02:43:20","date_gmt":"2025-11-29T02:43:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/600429\/"},"modified":"2025-11-29T02:43:20","modified_gmt":"2025-11-29T02:43:20","slug":"why-verstappen-will-be-trying-to-survive-qatar-gp-sprint-after-red-bull-set-up-misstep","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/600429\/","title":{"rendered":"Why Verstappen will be “trying to survive” Qatar GP sprint after Red Bull set-up misstep"},"content":{"rendered":"

Reigning world champion Max Verstappen<\/a> fears Saturday’s sprint race in Qatar will be about “trying to survive” after going with the wrong set-up direction on his Red Bull.<\/p>\n

In qualifying Verstappen started reporting crippling bouncing issues through the second sprint qualifying segment on the medium tyres, and in the final shoot-out on softs those woes appeared to only get worse.<\/p>\n

Having understeered off the high-downforce Losail track on his first flying lap, Verstappen only managed sixth on his second attempt, qualifying behind team-mate Yuki Tsunoda<\/a> for the first time and being nearly half a second adrift of sprint polesitter Oscar Piastri<\/a> in the McLaren<\/a>.<\/p>\n

“Not good from the first lap, just a really bad bouncing and a very aggressive understeer that would shift into oversteer in high speed,” four-time world champion Verstappen said. “So not what you want to go fast.\u00a0Then you’re locked in and we tried to, of course, change a few things on the wheel, but it never really worked. So that made it quite tricky.”<\/p>\n

As teams cannot make set-up changes before Saturday afternoon’s 19-lap sprint under parc ferme rules, Verstappen believes all he will be able to do is just to hang on and bring the car home where he qualified.<\/p>\n

“With this balance tomorrow in the sprint, it will not be a lot of fun,” he said. “So it will be more about just trying to survive, I guess, and then make some changes going into qualifying.”<\/p>\n

\"Max <\/p>\n

Max Verstappen, Red Bull Racing<\/p>\n

Photo by: Dom Gibbons \/ LAT Images via Getty Images<\/p>\n

With Verstappen trailing championship leader Lando Norris<\/a> by 24 points and being level with sprint polesitter Piastri, not being able to gain positions from sixth on the grid would be a dent to Verstappen’s long-shot title hopes, even if F1’s sprint races only pay one point per position in the top eight.<\/p>\n

According to Red Bull advisor Helmut Marko, Verstappen’s main problem was that the set-up direction his side of the garage chose didn’t work out on the soft tyres, although the Dutchman’s initial struggles on the mediums partially contradict that theory.<\/p>\n

“We didn’t have bouncing on the medium tyre, so we have to find the reason why it happened,” Marko said, before going into more detail with Austrian broadcaster ORF.<\/p>\n

“We have a problem with the soft tyres. On the medium we were in the game, but on the soft tyre \u2013 don\u2019t ask,” Marko added.<\/p>\n

Read Also:<\/p>\n

“I honestly can\u2019t even remember the last time a team-mate beat Max. And Yuki alone lost a tenth in Turn 1. So for Max, the changes were certainly no advantage when it came to soft tyre performance.<\/p>\n

“They have two different approaches. Yuki needs a stable rear-end. Max needs a sharp front-end that really bites. And the changes were made in that direction. And apparently it worked better for Yuki than it did for Max.<\/p>\n

“Thank God it\u2019s only the sprint. The main thing is that we can sort it out somehow for the main race.”<\/p>\n

Additional reporting by Ronald Vording<\/p>\n

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– The Autosport.com Team<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Reigning world champion Max Verstappen fears Saturday’s sprint race in Qatar will be about “trying to survive” after…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":600430,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[707,182667,1073,182666,749,79,16,15,188389],"class_list":{"0":"post-600429","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-sports","8":"tag-formula-1","9":"tag-losail-international-circuit","10":"tag-max-verstappen","11":"tag-qatar-gp","12":"tag-red-bull-racing","13":"tag-sports","14":"tag-uk","15":"tag-united-kingdom","16":"tag-why-verstappen-will-be-trying-to-survive-qatar-gp-sprint-after-red-bull-set-up-misstep"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115630691192902463","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/600429","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=600429"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/600429\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/600430"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=600429"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=600429"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=600429"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}