Max Verstappen\u2019s championship charge hit a speed bump at the Mexico City Grand Prix on Saturday as he qualified fifth and admitted his Red Bull had been \u201cvery difficult\u201d to handle.<\/p>\n
The four-times world champion, sitting 40 points behind McLaren\u2019s Formula One leader Oscar Piastri, made no attempt to sugar-coat his team\u2019s struggles despite winning three of the last four races.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s just been very difficult. I\u2019ve tried a lot of stuff. It\u2019s not the lack of trying,\u201d Verstappen told reporters.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere was just no grip. There\u2019s a turn where I have no traction, it slides. Basically, everything we tried didn\u2019t really work. I need people to retire in front of me to go ahead,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n
The struggles are particularly stinging at the Autodromo Hermanos Rodriguez, where Red Bull has historically been strong, though Verstappen was quick to dismiss assumptions based on past success.<\/p>\n
\u201cPeople always think you\u2019ve won in Mexico five times before so you need to be good. But last year we were not. The years before we probably had a big advantage to not really suffer.\u201d<\/p>\n
Red Bull\u2019s weekend was further hampered by qualifying experiments like a new floor that failed to deliver the desired results.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe went into qualifying trying something again and we didn\u2019t get it quite right in some corners. It made it better in some places, but in other areas more difficult and that didn\u2019t allow me to push,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n
Looking ahead to Sunday\u2019s race, Verstappen painted a grim picture of his prospects.<\/p>\n
\u201cI have no pace with the car, it doesn\u2019t matter what I do in turn one. Even if I jump cars, they will get me in the race,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
–Reuters–<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":13450,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false},"news-type":[20],"class_list":["post-13782","news","type-news","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","news-type-sport","entry"],"acf":{"short_description":"The struggles are particularly stinging at the Autodromo Hermanos Rodriguez, where Red Bull has historically been strong, though Verstappen was quick to dismiss assumptions based on past success.","published_date":null,"news_description":"The struggles are particularly stinging at the Autodromo Hermanos Rodriguez, where Red Bull has historically been strong, though Verstappen was quick to dismiss assumptions based on past success.","form_embed":"","author":"","image_caption":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/13782","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/news"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/13782\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18743,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/13782\/revisions\/18743"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13450"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13782"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"news-type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news-type?post=13782"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}