‘This whole weekend has been tough’ – Verstappen expecting ‘difficult’ race from P5 in Mexico

Max Verstappen is anticipating a “difficult” race from P5 on the grid at the Mexico City Grand Prix, with the Dutchman admitting that the “whole weekend has been tough” so far at the Autodromo Hermanos Rodriguez.

Despite topping the timesheets during Friday’s second practice hour, Verstappen raised concerns about Red Bull’s pace in the long runs, the reigning World Champion suggesting that everything other than the squad’s short run performance was “pretty bad”.

The car again looked tricky to handle at times during Saturday and Verstappen ultimately claimed fifth place in Qualifying, with his lap of 1m 16.070s nearly half a second off that set by polesitter Lando Norris.

“We tried a lot of stuff,” Verstappen reflected after the session. “Even going into Qualifying, I guess we got it a little bit wrong in some areas of the track. You only need to look at the onboard and you see enough – it’s just difficult.

“All weekend we couldn’t find the grip in the car, so that’s something that we need to understand because in Qualifying when you have those kinds of issues you are sliding a lot, and on a track like this you cannot afford that.”

Pushed on whether any changes had been made to his RB21 overnight following Friday’s issues, the 28-year-old answered: “I mean, big enough to normally see a difference, which we have seen in the last few weekends – if you make a change it shows something, but this whole weekend has been tough.”

Given the struggles with race pace that he flagged earlier in the weekend, Verstappen is expecting Sunday’s Grand Prix to be a challenging one as he prepares to line up behind the McLaren of Norris, the Ferrari pair of Charles Leclerc and Lewis Hamilton plus Mercedes’ George Russell.

“It’s going to be difficult,” he explained. “It’s going to be warm, it’s going to be tough on tyres. You need a good balance – I don’t think we have that.

“But we’ll see what we can do, I’m not really expecting to be in a battle ahead of me – they’re miles faster. It’s more with the people around me, I guess.”