Verstappen defeated after dramatic result in Hungary: "No one saw this coming but I'm not shocked"

"Looking at the whole weekend, I think we are happy to be in Q3," Verstappen says. "Because I've been more outside of the top 10 than in. It's been difficult. The whole weekend no grip. Front and rear. It was the same in qualifying. For me it was not really a shock. I just drove to what I already feel the whole weekend."

Has the team already found out what the problem actually is? "No, clearly not. I mean otherwise of course we would have changed it already but somehow this weekend nothing seems to work." When asked if he expected such a weekend, the Dutchman replies: "No, no. I never thought that it would be the strongest weekend for us here but this I think no one expected."

The Hungaroring did not prove to be a good match for Red Bull even last year, but it went better than now, Verstappen emphasizes "I think we still qualified very close to pole, within a few hundreds. So I think we were a lot more competitive back then. This weekend already from lap one it just fell off. We threw the car around a lot and nothing really gave a direction. And that of course is the biggest problem."

“Because normally when you change a lot on the set up it will always give you positives or negatives and now” he continues." it's just nothing works. It's like just going around in circles and nothing gives you any kind of idea of what to do." continues the four-time world champion.

Asked if he still has hope for progress after the summer break, Verstappen answers succinctly: "What kind of hope do you mean? Progress in performance? I mean, we're not anyway fighting anymore in a championship battle, right? So you just try to have good weekends here and there. This has clearly been a bad one so far."