Red Bull produced one of the most dramatic turnarounds of the season in Qatar on Saturday when it went from a “terrible” car in the sprint to pole on the road in qualifying.
World champion Max Verstappen had been left baffled by just how bad his RB20 had felt in the sprint race – as he and team-mate Sergio Perez had chased a disconnection problem between how the front and rear axles were behaving.
After coming home in eighth place, behind the Haas of Nico Hulkenberg, Verstappen was left struggling to find ways to describe how bad the car had felt.
"I just had no grip. The balance is terrible,” he told Viaplay. “On cold tyres you suffer even more from that. It felt like a rally car.
"I think I would have been better off competing with my father [Jos] at Spa in a rally - we would have had a better chance of being competitive over there, I think. It's really terrible, it was undriveable.
"We can change a lot of things [before qualifying], but we can't fix the problem. I don't know. We will change some things, but I don't expect miracles."
That miracle did come, however, as in the just more than three hours there was between the end of the sprint and the start of qualifying, the RB20 was transformed into a different beast.
Intense work by the engineers both at Red Bull’s Milton Keynes factory and on site in Qatar paid dividends as the squad picked the route that would eventually deliver the shock result.
That improvement did not come from a dramatic shift in wing settings to improve the balance – which had been ruled out after Perez tried a more loaded front wing at the end of the sprint.
Instead, it was all down to mechanical settings. Adjustments to the suspension and ride helped deliver a more compliant platform which lifted driver confidence and allowed Verstappen to unleash a lap that made him quickest at the end of it.
Verstappen, who will start the Grand Prix from second after a one-place grid penalty demoted him behind George Russell, said that neither he nor the team could have expected just how big a step these tweaks would make.
“After the sprint it didn't look so good,” he said. “But I think we also surprised ourselves with how much we found with the set-up. So that's something we have to look at, of course, why that was such a big difference.”
With the car changes appearing to be quite minor, even Verstappen said he thought any progress made would be quite small.
“[The tweaks were] not so big that that made me think 'oh, now suddenly we can compete'. And neither did the team,” he added.
Red Bull has made impressive gains with its RB20 since hitting its low point at the Italian Grand Prix.
The issues there were more aero-related and triggered valuable upgrades coming in time for the United States Grand Prix which have helped transform the pace since.
Verstappen took pole for the sprint there, he won in Brazil and he has been fastest again in Qatar here – showing that its mid-season struggles seem to be a thing of the past.
Asked when he last felt the car to be as good as it is now, Verstappen said: “That has been a long time ago. Austria, actually.
“There the car was really good over one lap, and then in the race not so much. But that was actually the last time when I thought 'wow, that was pretty good'. And now, the gap is obviously very small, but at least enough to go for pole.”
