Max Verstappen's 2022 F1 Hungarian GP appears to be going from bad to worse as the Red Bull driver's power unit (PU) failure in Q3 has resulted in him losing that PU entirely. It appears as though the team has found an issue with the PU and will be changing the internal combustion engine, turbocharger, MGU-H, and an MGU-K for the race. Neither of the drivers will get a penalty for this because these new parts are still under their allocated amount.
Both drivers had a rather average outing in Saturday's qualifying session. Sergio Perez had a poor qualifying that saw him get eliminated in Q2 and Max Verstappen suffered from a PU failure and could not set a competitive time in Q3. The two drivers will start the race in P10 (Max Verstappen) and P11 (Sergio Perez).
Speaking to the media after the race, Max Verstappen was slightly disappointed with how things went and said:
“It’s frustrating to start in P10 tomorrow after such a positive qualifying, we looked competitive and we had good pace. Although we have a slight point advantage, you always want to start at the front, it’s difficult to overtake here and get through the traffic so we’ll have to be patient. Tomorrow is definitely going to be an interesting one.’’
Max Verstappen's teammate not happy with the car
Sergio Perez fared worse than Max Verstappen as he lost out in Q2 without any mechanical issues thwarting his progress. Speaking to the media after the session, Perez said he didn't feel great in the car all weekend and was struggling to extract the maximum from it. He said:
“Qualification did not go as expected. I had to use a second set of tyres in Q2 because my first lap got deleted for track limits, then I got my time back but this already impacted our session. It was a bit of a strange situation. When I got going again Kevin (Magnussen) got in my way at turn 2, so I lost a few tenths as I had to go very big through the corner and couldn’t recover for the rest of the lap.’’
He added:
“Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to do much more. It wasn’t a great qualifying for me. I don’t have a great feeling in the car at the moment but tomorrow should be better, we should have better pace and hopefully we are able to recover to score some solid points.’’
With both Red Bulls starting in P10 and P11, it is a great opportunity for Ferrari to reduce its deficit to the Austrian team in the championship.