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Max Verstappen was surprised to finish second in the Hungarian Grand Prix following his struggles in qualifying.
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The Red Bull driver qualified sixth for the race but was promoted two places by Andrea Kimi Antonelli and Lewis Hamilton’s penalties. He got ahead of Charles Leclerc at the start and kept them all behind, while gaining another place due to Oscar Piastri’s retirement.
Afterwards Verstappen admitted he was surprised to equal his best result of the season so far with second place.
“I was still struggling with the same things as yesterday,” he said after the race. “The car was just extremely oversteery, just deg[rad]ing quite hard at one point as well.
“At the start, moving forward [made] our first stint possible. Then, of course, we got undercut, but then I made the move on Lewis, which I think made my second stint a little bit more straightforward.
“Then the team put me onto the softs [for the final stint], and initially I was like, ‘that’s going to be a long run to the end,’ but we made it work. So overall, I still don’t really understand how we are second, but I think as a team we performed strongly.
“I see it as a bit of an over-performance compared to what we expected, so I guess that’s a good thing considering how everything felt. I also saw, when I jumped out of the car again, there was damage on the car for whatever reason. So it was not made easy for us.”
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Verstappen was scathing on his radio about his car after he spun at the end of qualifying, telling his team it was “completely broken aerodynamically.” He felt no improvement in the race.
“It was exactly the same,” he said. “There’s nothing that you can change anyway after qualifying, so I knew that it was going to be tough, and it was very tough.
“Honestly, I think it was one of the hardest races of this year in terms of how I felt in the car, how I had to manage the balance as well, corner to corner. So, to be on the podium, I think, was an incredible result for us.”
Antonelli gained on Verstappen over the final laps but ran out of time to catch him. Verstappen said he was stunned to find himself so close to the front at the end of the race.
“I was just like, ‘How the hell did I end up here?’” he said. “That was it for me. I was shocked. I’m actually still shocked.”
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2026 Hungarian Grand Prix
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