MIAMI -- Max Verstappen has said Red Bull has halved the gap to the leading pack with the upgrade package its brought to the Miami Grand Prix.
Verstappen qualified fifth for Saturday sprint race, 0.6 seconds off Lando Norris’ McLaren, but looked much more competitive than at any point previously this season.
Verstappen and Red Bull were a big step behind the lead pack over the first three races and he spent most of the Japanese Grand Prix at the end of March battling Alpine’s Pierre Gasly.
“It feels more together,” Verstappen said of the team’s upgraded car. “Of course, [there are] still things that we are working on, but it’s been a really positive step for us.
“You know, last few races we were like over a second behind. I would say we have almost halved that gap now. So that’s positive.
“We’re still very weak in the first sector, which is mainly high-speed. So we know that we need to work on that. But yeah, the rest seemed all a bit more together, so a bit happier with that. At least it seems like we have cleared a little bit the midfield.”
Verstappen’s own view of Red Bull’s new car and the 2026 Formula 1 cars in general had dominated the sport’s news agenda since the first test of the year.
The four-time world champion has been the most outspoken critic of the sport’s new V6 hybrid turbos and the battery harvesting and deployment now required as part of qualifying and racing.
He called the new cars “anti-racing” and likened them to Mario Kart, while he also strongly hinted after the last race he was seriously considering walking away from the sport altogether at the end of 2026.
F1 made some tweaks to the rules ahead of the weekend, mainly aimed at mitigating the extreme lifting and coasting drivers had been doing through corners to generate battery energy.
Speaking on Thursday, Verstappen had called the tweaks a “tickle,” saying they were a long way short of the changes F1 needed to make to improve the new generation of cars.
When asked if the car felt more to his liking in sprint qualifying, Verstappen said: “It feels a bit more normal, a bit more together. It’s still not where I want it to be, obviously, but it’s at least allowing me to trust it a bit more and I can basically take a bit more time out of it.”
