Red Bull endured a frustrating start to the Austrian Grand Prix weekend as a significant upgrade package failed to deliver the expected gains during Friday practice at the Red Bull Ring.
Max Verstappen finished fourth in both sessions, ending the day more than half a second behind pace-setter Kimi Antonelli as the team searched for answers.
Both Verstappen and team-mate Isack Hadjar repeatedly complained over the radio about a strange engine behaviour in Turn 3, where the power unit was losing revs at the apex.
The four-time world champion described the issue as “hit-and-miss”, with Hadjar echoing a very similar assessment of the problem throughout the day.
Verstappen was particularly vocal about the corner in question, explaining the mechanics of what was going wrong in precise detail during his post-session debrief with media.
“It’s like the rears are grabbing, locking up and you lose all the support. It’s not a linear grip, it’s not nice. You’re constantly guessing the grip. And then once you go back on throttle, the engine has to catch up and it creates wheelspin on the exit,” Verstappen said.
“It’s really, really poor. Just in this corner, I don’t know how much we’re losing, but it really feels bad,” he added, underlining just how significant the problem felt from inside the cockpit.
Technical director Pierre Wache confirmed that an engine management issue was at the root of the problem and acknowledged it must be resolved before qualifying on Saturday.
“We clearly have an issue there on how we manage the engine and how the car is operating. That is something that we have to fix or try to get away from it,” Wache stated.
Racing Bulls driver Arvid Lindblad revealed that the sister team had been dealing with similar problems for a longer period, but that this was the first occasion the issue had affected the senior Red Bull outfit.
Beyond the engine behaviour, the overall car balance was also not where either driver needed it to be, and Wache offered a straightforward explanation for that particular challenge.
Red Bull introduced a substantial upgrade package in Austria, incorporating a revised floor, updated sidepods and a weight reduction, with the scale of the changes altering the fundamental characteristics of the car.
“It’s every time the same problem. When you change a lot on the car, the characteristics are changing a little bit, and the balance is changing,” Wache explained, adding that the team needed to understand how each set-up element now interacted with driver requirements.
“That is clearly something that we have to learn from FP2 and try to improve for FP3 and qualifying,” he continued, setting out the team’s priorities heading into Saturday.
Hadjar acknowledged that the scale of the package made it almost impossible to form a genuine performance verdict based on Friday’s running alone.
“So far, it just seems like it’s hard to extract the most of it because we’re completely off balance and we’re struggling a lot. So there’s a lot of digging to do tonight,” the French driver said.
Despite the complications, Wache remained confident that the upgrade represented genuine progress in terms of both weight and downforce levels over the previous specification.
“What we see is clearly a better package than what we had previously in terms of weight and in terms of downforce. But to see exactly the downforce levels that we can achieve, we will see more during the night and tomorrow morning,” he said.
Team principal Laurent Mekies stated that he hopes the upgrades will reduce Red Bull’s deficit from four to five tenths down to around two to three tenths, underlining the importance of the development push.
Hadjar did offer a note of encouragement, suggesting the package should make the car easier to drive once a proper balance is established, with improvements expected to come more naturally on Saturday.