Max Verstappen Aims for Tyre Mastery After P3 at Madring

Max Verstappen walked away from qualifying in Spain sounding more relieved than frustrated. After a ragged build‑up at the new Madring circuit, third on the grid felt like a small victory – and a clear sign that Red Bull had finally found some grip on a weekend that had threatened to drift away from them.

Across all three practice sessions, Verstappen had been nowhere near the sharp end, never higher than fifth and openly admitting on Friday that he and the team were still “getting up to speed” with every lap. The car looked edgy, the balance uncertain, the benchmark pace out of reach.

Qualifying told a different story.

When it mattered in Q2, Verstappen punched in the fastest time, briefly planting Red Bull back on top of the timesheets and hinting that there was more lurking in the RB underneath the earlier struggles. Come Q3, though, he had to give best to two men: polesitter Lando Norris and championship leader Kimi Antonelli, leaving the Dutchman to lock in P3.

“The car was honestly in a quite decent window,” Verstappen said afterwards, content with the turnaround but not pretending it was perfect. “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 final sector gnawed at him.

“I think still there's room for improvement – there can be some improvements made, especially in the final sector,” he admitted. Red Bull’s deployment strategy left him exposed there, the power delivery and energy usage not quite matching the demands of Madring’s closing sequence. “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 is close, the execution not quite.

Now the focus shifts from single‑lap precision to the grind of a first Grand Prix around this new venue, and Verstappen knows exactly where Sunday will be decided. Tyres – and who can keep them alive longest.

“[It could be] a long race, tough on tyres,” the four-time World Champion warned, already thinking in stint lengths and degradation curves rather than corner speeds. “So we'll be really about managing that and trying to really extract the most out of it and see what we can do.”

The grid says third. The tone suggests a driver who believes there is more on the table once the lights go out and the Madring starts to bite.