Verstappen slams ‘inferior’ Pirelli soft in Baku

Max Verstappen has torn into Pirelli’s decision to bring the C6 soft compound to Baku, calling it “slower from the start of the lap” and “just an inferior tyre.”

"That soft tyre is slower from the start of the lap," said the four-time world champion after clinching pole on Saturday. "It's just an inferior tyre. I'd like to talk to Pirelli sometime, so they can leave that one at home."

The quadruple world champion stressed the issue is not unique to Azerbaijan. "If that soft tyre doesn't work here… it didn’t work in Monaco either," he said. "That tyre didn’t really work in Imola and Montreal either, so it’s better to leave it at home."

For Baku, Pirelli opted for the softest allocation of the year - C6 as soft, C5 as medium, and C4 as hard - in a bid to open up strategy options beyond a single-stop race on a track where tyre wear is usually minimal, but Verstappen argued the experiment backfired, saying the soft gives "absolutely no references," disrupting setup work and making simulations unreliable.

"We don’t have to make so many radical changes to the car anymore," he noted of Red Bull’s improving 2025 form, "but with that tyre, it’s difficult." He added that Formula 1 should instead consider on creating strategic variety through mandatory use of all compounds - not by introducing tyres that don’t deliver.

"It’s better to force a two-stop race than to bring a tyre that’s no better," he insisted. "They say that tyre is faster, but it isn’t."