Red Bull transformed 'a dominant car into a monster', says Verstappen

Now we have to get used to it, him first: Max Verstappen no longer wins every weekend in Formula 1. Worse still: the podium becomes more and more difficult to obtain as the Grand Prix goes by. The latest example this weekend, at Monza, where the Red Bull number 1 was never in contention for victory and failed to finish a distant 6th, far, far from the standards of the Dutchman in recent seasons. A barking car, a failed pit stop and limited power due to a problem with the RBPT-Honda engine were the main reasons for this Italian failure.

Usually a participant in the race, the triple world champion was this time a spectator of the fight between the Ferrari and McLaren at the front. At the finish, a gulf separated Max Verstappen from the winner, Charles Leclerc : 38 seconds at the line! A defeat far from being to the taste of the Dutchman, obviously, who did not hide his disappointment in the mixed zone after the race. The man with 61 victories even went so far as to say that the Austrian team had "transformed a dominant car into a monster in the space of a few months."

“I wasn’t really frustrated during the race, I was just doing my own race. I think our strategy was not the right one today, although of course it wouldn’t have changed our position, and I think we could have done a better race overall, Max Verstappen acknowledged. It doesn't help that we couldn't run at full throttle for most of the race with the engine, because we had a problem. Overall, it was a pretty bad race."

Red Bull must " change the whole car » for Baku

According to Max Verstappen, Red Bull must completely overhaul its car before the next round of the championship scheduled for Azerbaijan (September 13-15) to regain competitiveness. “It doesn’t help that we weren’t running at full power for most of the race because we had an engine problem. So yeah, overall it’s a very bad race. [The engine problem] is really bad and before Baku we have a lot of work to do to change the whole car.”

The Dutchman also suffered with his tyres during the race, to the point of trying an offbeat strategy by using the hard tyres at the start of the race in order to keep up with the best and conserve tyre capital. But the problem was even deeper than that, explains Christian Horner. "We don't have a connection between the front and the back of the car, sums up the Red Bull Team Principal. Max couldn't lean on the rear in the corner, nor Checo. You end up compensating and creating understeer, and the limit is so fine..."

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