Jacques Villeneuve: Max Verstappen 'not in the right mental space' as Red Bull frustration grows

Jacques Villeneuve believes Max Verstappen is becoming increasingly frustrated with Red Bull’s difficult RB22

Jacques Villeneuve has claimed that Max Verstappen might not be in the right mental space as he becomes more and more frustrated with the Red Bull RB22.

The four-time champion had a disastrous start during the Chinese sprint race. After getting bogged down and suffering from wheelspin at the race start, Verstappen went from eighth on the grid to 13th.

"I have not a lot of words at the moment, to be honest," Verstappen told Sky Sports F1 after the sprint race. "Everything that could go wrong went wrong. The start is one problem that we have to fix, but then after that, the balance is all over the place. Probably the highest degradation of everyone out there, which is just uncontrollable.

"Plus some other bits on the car that were not, I would say, well prepared. We just need to get our stuff together."

When asked how much Red Bull could turn its form around this weekend, Villeneuve told Sky Sports F1: "Not really, because last year they had a car that was responding to Max and his driving style.

"Maybe it was a little bit off the pace, but they could fine-tune it. Right now, he's all over the place. He has no feedback. He doesn't know, he just knows the car is undrivable. He doesn't know what to do with it, and he's frustrated. So he's not even in the right mental space.

"So it will be very tough for the team to make a leap forward. But the team has changed. They've lost three of their head guys, [Adrian] Newey, [Christian] Horner, and Helmut Marko. And those were the pillars of the team. So maybe they're starting to pay the price for that."

Max Verstappen, Red Bull Racing

Photo by: Guido De Bortoli / LAT Images via Getty Images

Three-time W Series champion Jamie Chadwick added: "He's always going to drive it to his maximum. I don't think we can ever think he's not going to be motivated or he's not going to put 100% in. He's always going to put everything he's got into it on track, even if he doesn't sound like he's that happy out of the car.

"But it's frustrating. He's motivated by success, he's motivated by winning, he is one of the purest racers on the grid in terms of his desire to go racing. We've seen that with everything else he does. So this isn't fun for him. But equally, it wasn't fun for everyone else when he was dominating.

"So, it's part of the way that the sport kind of ebbs and flows. But for Red Bull to be as far off as they are, with a powertrain that they've developed in-house, with everything that they've got and the experience that they've got, I think they've got to really scratch their heads and put something together because otherwise they're not going to keep Max Verstappen for next year."