Brazil GP: Red Bull weighing pit-lane start for Verstappen after Q1 shock
Red Bull turned up at Interlagos looking like they’d finally found a groove again. By the end of qualifying, they were back in a hole – and staring at an awkward call that could send Max Verstappen to a pit-lane start on Sunday.
Verstappen was knocked out in Q1, the RB21 visibly short on grip and speed in all the wrong places, with teammate Yuki Tsunoda also failing to escape the first segment. The team reverted the cars out of parc fermé between the Sprint and qualifying, chased a bold direction – and got lost. Now the question is whether to double down on a misfiring setup or rip it up, break parc fermé again and start from the pits.
Helmut Marko didn’t sugarcoat it. Speaking to Austrian TV, he said Red Bull will sit down and decide whether “drastic changes” are needed to wake the car up – fully aware that doing so would mean a pit-lane launch for Verstappen rather than the P16 he currently holds. The blunt assessment from Marko: the track ramped up, Red Bull didn’t, and grip disappeared where it mattered. Sector 1 and 3 were the alarm bells; the stopwatch confirmed it.
It’s a gut punch just as Verstappen had built a run of six straight podiums to steady his title push in the wake of Lando Norris’ charge at the front. Mexico already hinted at the wobble: Red Bull brought bits, didn’t get the return, and Verstappen’s podium there owed more to craft than raw pace in a race Norris controlled. The team thought they’d understood the direction. Brazil says otherwise.
Inside the garage, the tone was rueful. Laurent Mekies called it “the price you pay” when you roll the dice before quali and it comes up snake eyes. Red Bull had tried to open the RB21’s window for Interlagos’ bumps and rapid transitions; instead, the car slid out of its sweet spot. In qualifying trim, it looked nervous on entry, lazy on traction, and nowhere near compliant through the fast change of direction at the Senna ‘S’ and the run back up the hill.
So what’s the play? Stick with a troublesome package and trust Verstappen to brute-force something out of it from 16th, or break parc fermé, take a pit-lane start and give him a car he can actually race with? Interlagos can reward a clean, aggressive Sunday with tyre life and DRS trains offering chances, but only if the car responds. If you’re Red Bull and you believe the baseline is fundamentally wrong, the pit lane starts to look less like a punishment and more like a reset.
There’s a strategic upside to that route. A pit-lane start frees the team to make ride height, wing and mechanical changes that could widen the RB21’s operating window and protect the rear tyres – essential here. It also opens up an off-sequence strategy if Safety Cars tumble the order, and Interlagos loves a curveball. The risk is obvious: you sacrifice track position you might have clawed back with a clean first lap and a safety-first approach. The reward is a car Verstappen can lean on, which tends to end well for everyone in the garage wearing navy blue.
The bigger picture isn’t lost on anyone. With Norris leading the standings heading into São Paulo, Red Bull can’t afford to leave free points sitting in a setup sheet. Verstappen’s been carving podiums out of lean weekends, but this one needs more than tyre wizardry. It needs a reset.
We’ll know soon enough which way they jump. Either way, Sunday has already turned into damage limitation for Red Bull – and a different kind of test for Verstappen. Title runs often hinge on the messy weekends, the ones where you fight the car as much as the field. This is one of those. If Red Bull are brave, it might also be the day their season flips back the right way. If not, expect a long afternoon trying to make a stubborn RB21 behave around a circuit that punishes hesitation.
What’s clear is the margin is gone. Red Bull’s recent upgrades haven’t delivered the step they wanted, and the window is tight enough that a single swing can turn the car from compliant to complicated. Brazil exposed that. Now it’s a question of who adapts faster – the engineers on the pit wall or the driver in the cockpit. With Verstappen, you’d back the latter. But he needs the team to give him a fighting chance.
