Even incomplete long runs reveal how Verstappen is losing substantial ground to Mercedes

There’s still some work to do at Red Bull, that’s clear. Verstappen wasn’t entirely satisfied with the car’s handling during Friday’s sessions. While a crucial fix for the steering column issue was found in Miami, things didn’t go smoothly on the first day in Canada. Max Verstappen and Isack Hadjar were a long way off the leaders in the sprint qualifying and, for now, don’t seem to be able to draw much hope from the long runs either.

Of course, the sidenote—especially in a sprint weekend—is that it’s difficult to draw firm conclusions from the long runs. No one knows what fuel loads, engine modes, and run plans the teams were using. Still, it’s interesting to note the baseline with which the teams head into the races. It was difficult for every driver to find a proper window for long runs, as the session was interrupted twice by red flags in the first half.

Of the four top teams, Verstappen and Hadjar managed the longest long runs, each logging more than ten laps. All drivers ran most of FP1 on the hard tyre and used the final ten minutes for qualifying runs on the soft. However, Red Bull’s long run in FP1 was the slowest of the four teams, but as mentioned, Verstappen and Hadjar were the only ones who completed a reasonable long run.

Kimi Antonelli and George Russell, both with short long runs, were about seven to eight tenths faster than the Red Bull drivers. The Briton also took pole for the sprint race. It appears that Mercedes—despite the large upgrade package—has managed to establish a solid baseline to be quick right from FP1. At McLaren, Piastri was the only one who managed a long run, as unfortunately, nothing resembling a clear long run could be extracted from Norris’s runs.

Piastri is slower than the two Mercedes drivers but faster than the Red Bulls. With an average of 1:16.356, he places P4 in the ranking above, as Charles Leclerc was almost on the pace of Antonelli and Russell. With a six-lap long run and an average of 1:16.002, he was even faster than Antonelli. Lewis Hamilton’s average was 1:16.430. For the moment, the seven-time world champion doesn’t seem entirely comfortable.

While there’s no need to panic at Red Bull yet, Verstappen made it clear the pace isn’t good enough. No data was required to see that the RB22 wasn’t stable enough to give both drivers a reliable platform to push and challenge the other top teams. That didn’t surprise Verstappen either. “I’m not surprised by this result. I didn’t feel good in the car. It felt really bad. My feet were flying off the pedals,” he said.

“That made it very difficult to be consistent and we need to investigate that. We’ll have to deal with it in the sprint race and hopefully improve it for qualifying,” said the four-time world champion. Fine-tuning the car will therefore have to happen during the sprint race, which Red Bull will undoubtedly treat as a test session. Hopefully, they can still find something to improve the situation.