‘Not even feisty’ Max Verstappen questioned: “Something has changed”

Jacques Villeneuve believes “something has changed” with Max Verstappen who he claims is “not even feisty” as he continues to see his F1 championship lead shrink.

The Red Bull driver endured a tough race in Baku as he battled an ill-handling car on his way to finishing fifth. Verstappen was promoted two places thanks to a late crash involving teammate Sergio Perez and Ferrari’s Carlos Sainz.

Verstappen’s championship rival, Lando Norris, who had started 15th after a shock Q1 exit, overtook the Dutchman as he took fourth.

The result cut Verstappen’s championship lead down to 59 points and marked the third consecutive race that his advantage in the title race has been reduced by Norris.

And 1997 F1 world champion Villeneuve has questioned Verstappen amid his recent struggles.

"Max for the last few races sounds downbeat. He's not even feisty in the race and doesn't fight that hard,” Villeneuve said during a guest appearance on Sky Sports F1.

"Even on the radio, we barely hear him. Something has changed. It's as if he knows he hasn't won [for a while], he knows it [the car] is not driving like he wants.

"Now his team-mate was a lot quicker than him. That's a very strange situation.”

The three-time world champion was left rueing set-up changes going into qualifying which made his RB20 “worse”.

“I think we just paid the price with the changes that we made into qualifying. That just made it really difficult to drive,” Verstappen told media including Crash.net.

“The car was jumping around a lot, the wheels were coming off the ground in the corners. When you don’t have a contact patch with the tarmac, it’s very difficult.

“You try to make changes always to make the car better but unfortunately what we did made it worse.

"The overall behaviour is better [with the new floor]. Unfortunately we just made some wrong decisions going into qualifying and we paid the price for it.”