Verstappen baffled by Red Bull's "car degradation" as qualifying woes continue in Hungary

Max Verstappen admitted Red Bull faces a major overnight challenge after a difficult qualifying session for the Hungarian Grand Prix, with the reigning World Champion describing the RB22's problems as "car degradation" rather than tyre degradation.

ed Bull endured a frustrating Saturday at the Hungaroring as neither Verstappen nor team-mate Isack Hadjar could match the pace of Ferrari and McLaren. Both drivers comfortably progressed through Q1, but Hadjar spun during Q2 before recovering on his final run to reach the top 10.

Verstappen also suffered a costly mistake in the decisive stages of qualifying, spinning on his second flying lap after losing the rear of his car. The Dutchman ultimately qualified sixth with a best time of 1:17.725, leaving him facing a difficult task on a circuit where overtaking is notoriously challenging.

According to Verstappen, the team's problems began before qualifying and only worsened as the session unfolded.

"The whole weekend has been tricky for us so far," Verstappen said. "Unfortunately, from FP3 onwards, we started having problems that were out of our control and quite unexpected. We have a lot to look at overnight, and really understand what caused these problems."

The four-time World Champion revealed that Red Bull was battling multiple handling issues, including aerodynamic losses, excessive rear instability and high degradation, making it almost impossible to extract performance from the car.

"We saw aerodynamic losses, which is especially difficult in Qualifying, and we were struggling with degradation as well as the rear. The car was oversteering a lot and each lap it wasn't improving. Hopefully we can fix our problems ahead of the race and see what we can improve starting from P6 tomorrow."

Speaking after the session, Verstappen painted an even bleaker picture of Red Bull's struggles, insisting the problem lay with the car itself rather than the tyres.

"I mean, the whole weekend's been tough but in Qualifying especially, the car is just degrading – we don't have tyre deg, we have car degradation."

"I really can't make anything out of it – it's just really, really tough. The car suddenly just started oversteering a lot. Honestly every lap that I did in Qualifying just was worse and worse, so it's not good."

Perhaps most concerning for Red Bull is that Verstappen admitted the team has yet to identify a consistent root cause, with different issues appearing from session to session.

"We keep having different problems all the time and that's probably the biggest issue at the moment, that there is always something else that arises, and that's not good," he conceded.