Max Verstappen Aims for Tyre Masterclass After Third Place in Madring Qualifying
Max Verstappen walked away from qualifying at the Madring with something he hadn’t really felt all weekend: momentum.
On paper, third on the grid for Sunday’s Spanish Grand Prix looks routine for a four-time World Champion. In reality, it marked a sharp swing from a scruffy build‑up in which Red Bull never rose higher than fifth in any of the three practice sessions and spent much of Friday admitting they were still “getting up to speed” with every lap.
The Madring is new to Formula 1, and it has not given up its secrets easily. Verstappen and Red Bull chased balance, grip and confidence through practice, often looking a step behind the front-runners. Then qualifying arrived, and the picture changed.
He lit up Q2, going fastest and briefly suggesting that Red Bull had finally cracked the circuit. When it mattered in Q3, though, he had to settle for third, edged out by polesitter Lando Norris and championship leader Kimi Antonelli.
The result, though, landed better than it sounds.
“The car was honestly in a quite decent window,” Verstappen reflected, pleased with the turnaround. For a team that had looked off the pace for most of the weekend, simply parking the car in the top three felt like a small victory. “For us I think to be in the top three in Qualifying is good. We can be happy with that.”
Happy, but not satisfied. That’s not how Verstappen is wired.
He pointed straight at the weakness: the final sector. That last stretch of the Madring, with its technical, rhythm-breaking corners and heavy demand on traction and deployment, exposed a flaw Red Bull couldn’t fully mask.
“I think still there's room for improvement – there can be some improvements made, especially in the final sector,” he admitted. The issue, as he saw it, was not just mechanical grip or balance, but how the team handled their energy use. “That's where we really were struggling probably a little bit too much with our deployment strategy. So that's things to learn for in the future, but for us to be in the top three is good.”
The message was clear: the raw pace isn’t perfect, but the damage is limited. And Verstappen has a car close enough to strike.
Now the focus turns to what promises to be a gruelling first Grand Prix at the Madring. New circuits often chew through tyres, and the long, demanding layout hints at exactly that kind of race. Verstappen knows it.
“[It could be] a long race, tough on tyres,” he said, already thinking in stint lengths and degradation curves rather than single-lap fireworks. For Red Bull, Sunday will be less about outright speed and more about control. “So we'll be really about managing that and trying to really extract the most out of it and see what we can do.”
If qualifying was about surviving a difficult weekend and emerging in range, the race will be about turning that platform into something more. Verstappen starts behind Norris and Antonelli, but with a car that has crept into a “decent window” and a team renowned for race-day execution.
On an unfamiliar track, with tyre wear looming and strategy set to play a starring role, third on the grid is not a dead end. It’s a launch pad.
