2025 Oracle Red Bull Racing F1 Team

[Wouter]

Max to start P5 in Mexico: 'No balance and no grip'

Published on 26 October 2025 by Misha van der Kroon

Max Verstappen will start the Mexican Grand Prix from fifth on the grid. At the Autódromo Hermanos Rodríguez, the Dutchman was unable to challenge for the top spots, as Lando Norris set the fastest time in his McLaren ahead of Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc in P2 and Lewis Hamilton in P3. The Mercedes of George Russell and Max completed the top five. Max’s Oracle Red Bull Racing teammate, Yuki Tsunoda, will start the race from eleventh.

“It was very difficult,” says Max after qualifying in Mexico City, speaking to Viaplay.
“In my first lap I already had a big moment in turn nine. That whole sector was just impossible. There was no balance at all.
I couldn’t attack, I was just sliding everywhere, understeer, oversteer, nothing felt right.”

“We were bad everywhere, and in sector two you only need to watch my onboard to see it, it was unbelievably poor in the high-speed corners. None of the laps felt good today. No balance, no grip, and I expect tomorrow will only be worse.
All the long runs I’ve done were bad, and that’s definitely not going to improve.”

[Sergej]

Never heard Max so negative, I think he believed and got big disappointment.

[search]

let's see what happens at the start. Perez wasn't far from taking the lead from 5th in 2023.

[venkyhere]

let's see what happens at the start. Perez wasn't far from taking the lead from 5th in 2023.

And what's the point of that ? Same thing happened with an unbalanced car in 2024. Got to the lead. Then what happened ? All we have to do to find out what happens, is listen to what Max has to say about what it will be in the race. He should fight for his life, inorder to finish ahead of Piastri & even if he does that, has to pray for rain in Brazil.

[Gillian]

let's see what happens at the start. Perez wasn't far from taking the lead from 5th in 2023.

And what's the point of that ? Same thing happened with an unbalanced car in 2024. Got to the lead. Then what happened ? All we have to do to find out what happens, is listen to what Max has to say about what it will be in the race. He should fight for his life, inorder to finish ahead of Piastri & even if he does that, has to pray for rain in Brazil.

Piastri is not really the problem at this point, losing too much points to Norris is.

[Henk_v]

I feel a bit uncomfortale with Russel. He is a mean little pricess who would just love to pull one on Max. He will defend his position hard and I doubt if he really bothers going off together. Or at least he'll try to go for some penalty points.

[search]

let's see what happens at the start. Perez wasn't far from taking the lead from 5th in 2023.

And what's the point of that ? Same thing happened with an unbalanced car in 2024. Got to the lead. Then what happened ? All we have to do to find out what happens, is listen to what Max has to say about what it will be in the race. He should fight for his life, inorder to finish ahead of Piastri & even if he does that, has to pray for rain in Brazil.

Piastri is not really the problem at this point, losing too much points to Norris is.

I'd think if Verstappen can reduce the gap to 1st (= finish 4th, in case norris wins), it's a decent result for the championship. Knowing Norris, the momentum he currently has will stop anyway once he got the lead.

[Sergej]

On a different note, Italian commentator Carlo Vanzini telling us who is the second team under scrutineering for Budget Cap (on Friday he posted a similar story with a Mercedes hat)


usual caveat, pinch of salt, etc

[Juzh]

Maybe all the extra cooling they had to hack on is really messing up the aerodynamics. Anyway, not expecting much from the race, even Piastri could become a problem at some point.

[marcel171281]

let's see what happens at the start. Perez wasn't far from taking the lead from 5th in 2023.

And what's the point of that ? Same thing happened with an unbalanced car in 2024. Got to the lead. Then what happened ? All we have to do to find out what happens, is listen to what Max has to say about what it will be in the race. He should fight for his life, inorder to finish ahead of Piastri & even if he does that, has to pray for rain in Brazil.

Piastri is not really the problem at this point, losing too much points to Norris is.

Not really. As long as there is a net gain on the championship leader (irrelevant who that is) it is still all to play for. Second place is of no meaning whatsoever.

Plus, the closer the McLaren drivers are, the bigger the mayhem near the end of the season. We need mayhem.

[Juzh]

Max's P5 lap from qualifying 1:16.070

https://streamable.com/ydu6xp

[f1isgood]

Max's P5 lap from qualifying 1:16.070

https://streamable.com/ydu6xp

Comparing to last year, the car hardly improved on pure pace. McLaren improved by about 7 tenths.

[f1isgood]

I think Max needs to get to P3 by Turn 1 and then finish the race effectively there. That will be a very very good result.

[Sergej]

I think it's impossible to predict the start, anything can happen and we had very different start outcomes these years. Max will try his best for sure, but hard to predict what he can achieve. Plus, it's all quite irrelevant if the pace will suck.

[Vettel165]

The car looked stable on the onboard, just had more understeer and lack of front-end rotation comparing to Austin. In theory they wanted to protect the tyres, this setup might work better in the race. But there is not a lot of hope left. We will hear each other again after the race, when we will most probably debate how the season is now really over…