Max Verstappen said his feet were flying off the pedals after a troubled Sprint Qualifying at the Circuit Gilles Villeneuve that left him and team-mate Isack Hadjar on the fourth row for Saturday's 23-lap Sprint.
Verstappen, who qualified sixth and was more than half a second adrift of polesitter George Russell, described a car he could not control over the bumps. "I mean I'm not surprised. My feeling in the car was not very good, I was struggling a lot with the ride of the car all over the bumps," he said, adding: "Couldn't put my foot down. My feet were even flying off the pedals. Just made it very difficult to be consistent and that's something that we need to investigate."
The numbers underlined how badly Red Bull's RB22 was compromised on a day when track grip was inconsistent: Verstappen was left on the fourth row, qualifying sixth, and finished Sprint Qualifying more than half a second behind the pole time — a gap he said made consistency impossible. He also warned the team that fixes would be needed for later sessions. "It was not great. Of course, we are stuck with that for the Sprint but some other things to understand and hopefully that will then be a bit better for Qualifying," Verstappen said.
Hadjar, who sat 0.028 seconds behind Verstappen on the timing sheets, echoed the complaint and painted the same picture of a car fighting its own suspension over Villeneuve's notorious surface. He said he "didn't even get a time on the soft" in FP1 and only found a better feeling on the soft in SQ3: "I had finally a good feeling in SQ3 on the soft. I'm happy about that final lap and also the gap to my team mate is closer than Miami so it's a bit reassuring but at the moment, we both don't have a good feeling in the car."
That reassurance was small comfort. Hadjar described how the RB22 simply could not use the available grip because it was being thrown around. "We are struggling massively with bouncing and the track state is not good, we're losing a lot of time. Even if the grip is there we can't use it," he said, stressing that their pace was blunted not by tyres but by ride instability.
The friction between driver experience and team attempts to adapt was clear. Red Bull's technical staff, according to team principal Laurent Mekies, experimented with different tyre preparation laps on Verstappen's car and acknowledged it had been "tricky to get the front tyre to work over one lap in Canada." Those tactical moves underline the team's search for a one-lap solution, but they do not solve what both drivers described as a car that jumps, unsettles and strips away usable lap time.
Context makes the complaint less surprising: the Circuit Gilles Villeneuve is notorious for a bumpy surface in places, a feature that amplifies oscillation and tyre load issues when the car setup does not absorb shock cleanly. Hadjar's remarks also echo a tougher weekend trend for him — he struggled for pace in Miami — but his SQ3 lap showed some short-term improvement even as the broader bouncing problem persisted.
The tension for Red Bull is practical and immediate. They are stuck with the configuration that produced sixth and seventh on the grid for a 23-lap Sprint that gives little time to recover, and the drivers insist the problem is systemic rather than a single-session fluke. Verstappen warned that the team will need to investigate the root cause before Qualifying, but his frank assessment and Hadjar's confirmation point to a weekend that could slip away if the bouncing cannot be tamed.
Unless mechanics and engineers find a fix that calms the RB22's ride, Red Bull will head into the rest of the Canadian weekend with two fast drivers hampered by a car that cannot exploit the track — and that is the clearest immediate threat to their result in Montreal.
