Marko pins Verstappen’s SQ3 slump on soft tyre as Tsunoda steals the Red Bull spotlight
Max Verstappen’s Sprint Saturday got weird in a hurry. After looking sharp on the hard and tidy on the medium, the Red Bull lit up the timing screens early in Qatar — and then promptly bounced him out of contention when it mattered most.
The three-time champion will start only sixth for the Sprint at Losail after a ragged SQ3 on the soft tyre, a run blighted by bouncing, track limits, and an RB21 that never looked at ease on the C3. Helmut Marko, never one to bury the lede, said the tyre was the problem, not the setup.
“It’s the soft tyre,” he summed up to media after the flag. “On the medium tyre, we were competitive, similar to P1 on the hard tyre, we were also competitive. The changes we did obviously didn’t cure our problem on the soft tyre — they were better on Yuki’s car.”
Better indeed. Yuki Tsunoda outqualified Verstappen for the first time as Red Bull teammates, a feather worth keeping, even if it came with a bit of context. The pair diverged on setup direction: “Max wanted more front end, Yuki more rear end, and that was a better solution,” Marko explained. In SQ3, Tsunoda found time; Verstappen found porpoising.
The numbers tell the story. Quickest of all in SQ1 on the hard. Third and within a whisker in SQ2 on the medium. Then sixth in SQ3 once the softs went on — behind both McLarens, with Oscar Piastri on pole and Lando Norris in P3, and Fernando Alonso popping up in P4 for good measure. The timing could be costly. Verstappen’s chasing a 24-point deficit in the standings, while Piastri sits level with him on points; the Australian beating Norris is the only sliver of consolation Red Bull can take from this one.
What’s puzzling for Red Bull is that the RB21 didn’t bounce on the harder compounds. Ride heights were unchanged between runs, per Marko, which points the finger squarely at the interaction between the softest rubber and the car’s aero platform. “We didn’t have bouncing on the medium tyre; the ride height stayed the same for both tyres,” he said. “So we have to find the reason why it happened.”
The good news: the Sprint shouldn’t force anyone onto the softs. The bad news: passing at Losail isn’t generous, and Verstappen’s got quick cars in front. “I think we will be more competitive, but overtaking is really difficult,” Marko admitted.
In the moment, then, it’s damage limitation — and a night to think. Parc fermé opens after the Sprint, unlocking a second shot at the problem before main qualifying. Red Bull’s task list is obvious: diagnose why the soft triggers oscillation on Verstappen’s side and lock in the more stable window Tsunoda stumbled into. The championship fight isn’t running away — the field’s tightly packed, Mercedes are lurking, Alonso’s in the thick of it, and chaos is never far in a Sprint — but the margin for setup missteps is shrinking.
If there’s a broader takeaway, it’s that the 2025 pecking order is elastic. One session turns a title push from routine to rescue mission. Verstappen still has the speed — SQ1 and SQ2 prove that — but the RB21’s sensitivity on the soft tyre left him a passenger at the worst time. Fix that, and this weekend flips.
Fail to fix it, and the orange wall might have to settle for an unfamiliar Saturday view: their man coming forward, rather than disappearing up the road.
