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Max Verstappen’s difficult weekend at the 2025 Brazilian Grand Prix became worse during qualifying at Interlagos. The Red Bull driver was eliminated in Q1 after struggling for grip throughout his lap, setting 17th place.Verstappen’s 1:10.403s run was still better than teammate Yuki Tsunoda's 1:10.711 to qualify 19th. Former F1 World Champion Jacques Villeneuve believed that the root cause of Red Bull’s struggles lay in Verstappen’s lack of a competitive teammate capable of sharing the car’s developmental load.Speaking to F1TV after qualifying, the 1997 World Champion analyzed Verstappen’s ongoing struggles and said:“Vegas is another chaotic one, but this is a team that you have to be careful with. Mexico was the same thing. He said that he changed the car and it made it worse. That's the second race in a row, but that's the price to pay when you don't have a teammate. He's alone working on developing that car, moving it forward. Just in itself, that's tough, but if your teammate makes the team or the car go slower, you pay a very, very strong price here (Interlagos).”Red Bull’s weekend in São Paulo had been frustrating from the start. Max Verstappen finished fourth in Saturday’s Sprint, unable to match the McLaren and Mercedes drivers ahead despite a strong opening lap. In that race, he admitted that the team had misjudged their setup direction, and it didn’t have the grip to fight.Red Bull Racing Team Principal Laurent Mekies and Max Verstappen before the F1 Grand Prix of Brazil. Source: GettyThe same issues carried over into qualifying, where the RB21 once again looked unpredictable through Interlagos’ sweeping corners. For Jacques Villeneuve, it was a problem years in the making. Verstappen’s team situation has indeed been unique in recent years.Since 2019, Red Bull’s second seat has seen a revolving door of drivers - from Pierre Gasly and Alex Albon to Sergio Perez, Daniel Ricciardo, and now Liam Lawson and Yuki Tsunoda - none of whom have consistently matched the Dutchman’s pace or feedback. That has left Verstappen largely on his own in fine-tuning the RB21’s development, a disadvantage that has shown this season.The 27-year-old has scored 321 of Red Bull’s total points, while Tsunoda has scored just 25. At Interlagos, conditions made things worse. The track was damp in patches after overnight rain, creating unpredictable grip levels from corner to corner. While McLaren’s Lando Norris adapted brilliantly to claim the pole with a 1:09.511 in Q3, Max Verstappen’s RB21 simply couldn’t find balance or traction.“The car was all over the place”: Max Verstappen explains Red Bull’s strugglesMax Verstappen ahead of the F1 Grand Prix of Brazil. Source: GettyMax Verstappen has struggled all weekend at the Brazilian GP. He was 17th in FP1, and his second sector time ranked only 13th among the grid. In Sprint qualifying, he again lacked pace, finishing three-tenths off the McLarens at P6.In the Sprint, the Dutchman briefly rose from sixth to fourth before the race was red-flagged due to a multi-car crash. After the restart, he was unable to challenge the McLaren or Mercedes front-runners. Red Bull made setup changes for qualifying to find more grip, but while they improved the car’s behavior on bumps, it came at the cost of rear-end stability.Pushing harder in qualifying only worsened things. The Dutchman experienced violent oversteer in Sector 2, which ultimately left him 0.066 seconds short of advancing to Q2. Speaking afterwards, he said, via Sky Sports F1:“It was just bad. I couldn’t push at all. The car was all over the place, sliding around a lot. I had to under-drive it a lot just to not have a moment. That of course doesn’t work in qualifying.”Those comments echoed his earlier remarks from Sprint Qualifying, where he had compared the car to a “pogo stick” and admitted that balance changes hadn’t produced any improvement. The once-dominant Red Bull now appears to be fighting both its setup window and a narrowing performance gap against McLaren and Mercedes.Heading into Sunday’s 71-lap Grand Prix, Max Verstappen sits third in the championship standings with 326 points, trailing Norris (365) and Piastri (356). With only three rounds and one Sprint left in the season, Red Bull faces an uphill battle and may even start Verstappen from the pit lane if further overnight setup changes are required.
