Ahead of the United States Grand Prix at the Circuit of the Americas, Max Verstappen has joked in the paddock that he will need to order a brand new spine due to the notoriously bumpy circuit conditions that severely test driver physical endurance.
The Dutch driver experienced a challenging start to the season before successfully bouncing back and returning to the front-running battle. Although winning momentum has returned following strong performances in recent rounds, the four-time world champion is deliberately trying to lower external expectations ahead of the upcoming American and Mexican legs.
Both upcoming Grands Prix present vastly different technical hurdles for every team on the grid. The Texas venue is widely recognized for its aggressive bumps, while the Autodromo Hermanos Rodriguez poses unique cooling and aerodynamic demands due to its high-altitude location.
Addressing the physical challenges waiting in Austin, Verstappen offered a candid assessment of the track layout based on what he observed from endurance racing categories. He expects the car's suspension and driver ergonomics to be pushed to absolute breaking points.
"I mean, it's very difficult to say. I don't want to say now that I will be in the fight in Austin, but yeah, the last few weekends have been great," Verstappen stated. He emphasized his approach of taking the competitive weekend strictly one session at a time.
"But I just take it race by race, and once we are in Austin, then we'll see how it will go there. But it's again a very different track. From what I saw in WEC, the track is incredibly bumpy. Oh my god, I probably need to order a new spine after the weekend, or become like Robocop. Crazy," he remarked regarding the severity of the track surface.
Beyond the asphalt undulations, Red Bull faces an entirely different set of operational parameters when the championship immediately shifts to the thin air of Mexico City, where power units and cooling packages operate under extreme thermal stress.
"That's again a new challenge for everyone, you know, to deal with those bumps. And then we just go from there. We have to go to Mexico, again, high altitude, everything will run super hot. We need to see how the engine is going to perform at that altitude, how the car is behaving, because it's very different. So, you know, there are so many different things that you can get right or wrong in those races, but we'll see," he concluded.
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