Max Verstappen Aims for Tyre Mastery After Third on Madring Grid
Max Verstappen walked away from qualifying in Spain sounding more relieved than frustrated. Third on the grid, after a scruffy build‑up and three low‑key practice sessions at the Madring, felt like a small victory – and a platform for something bigger on Sunday.
Across all three practice runs, the Red Bull never looked truly comfortable. Verstappen did not climb higher than fifth, openly admitting on Friday that he and the team were still “getting up to speed” with every lap around Formula 1’s newest venue.
Qualifying told a different story.
The four-time World Champion punched in the fastest time of Q2, a reminder that Red Bull still carries serious one-lap bite when the window opens. In Q3 he could not quite live with the final step, beaten to pole by Lando Norris and slotting in behind championship leader Kimi Antonelli, but P3 marked a clear step forward from the early-weekend drift.
“The car was honestly in a quite decent window,” Verstappen said afterwards. “For us I think to be in the top three in Qualifying is good. We can be happy with that.”
Happy, but not satisfied. Not with the detail. Not with the last sector.
Verstappen pointed straight at the final part of the lap as the weak spot, highlighting issues with how Red Bull deployed its power unit at the end of the Madring’s demanding run.
“I think still there's room for improvement – there can be some improvements made, especially in the final sector,” he explained. “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.”
So the raw pace is there in flashes; the execution, not quite. The picture for Sunday, though, is less about deployment maps and more about survival.
Long race, short tempers
The Madring makes its debut as a Grand Prix host this weekend, and Verstappen is already braced for a race that could turn into a tyre-management examination from lights to flag.
“[It could be] a long race, tough on tyres,” the 28-year-old said. “So we'll be really about managing that and trying to really extract the most out of it and see what we can do.”
That single line reveals Red Bull’s Sunday plan: stay within striking distance, protect the rubber, and wait for the race to come to them. From third on the grid, with Norris ahead and Antonelli between them, Verstappen is not in control of the front row – but he is close enough to punish any misstep.
He has seen weekends like this before: a slow start on Friday, a car that wakes up in qualifying, and a race defined less by outright speed than by who can keep their tyres alive when the track temperature climbs and the grip falls away.
If Red Bull nail that part of the equation at the Madring, third on Saturday may not be the ceiling.
