Max Verstappen exposes Red Bull problem that cost him a shot at victory in Brazil
Verstappen charged from P21 to second, but revealed his Red Bull was in trouble for much of the race – and believes there was more on offer.
Max Verstappen’s Red Bull suffered a problem during the São Paulo Grand Prix, an issue that left his car in ‘not good shape’ as he called for his team to understand what went wrong.
Verstappen sliced decisively through the pack in the first stint, climbing from P21 on the grid to finish second and beaten only by McLaren’s Lando Norris. But could it have been more, had his car not suffered an issue that he said he felt kicked in after his first stint?
Max Verstappen reveals what went wrong with his Red Bull in Brazil
Verstappen was back up into the points by only the third lap, and quickly got past Ferrari’s Lewis Hamilton as the seven-time F1 World Champion made an error under braking.
A brave wheel-to-wheel battle with Oscar Piastri saw Verstappen pounce on the Australian before easing past Alex Albon into Turn 4, while Nico Hulkenberg and Liam Lawson proved easy prey for the Red Bull driver.
Both Mercedes drivers suffered incidents that compromised their races, with George Russell spinning in the pitlane exit and Kimi Antonelli spinning at Turn 1 on Lap 20 to hand Lando Norris the lead, while another off-track moment minutes later gave Verstappen second place.
But Verstappen was unable to do anything about Norris’ lead, which hovered around the 10-second mark on the slick tyres, and swelled to around 13-14 seconds once they had swapped to the intermediate tyres.
Reflecting on the race from his perspective as he celebrated second place in the post-race press conference, Verstappen revealed that he had suffered some sort of issue on his car that meant he believed he was fighting with one hand behind his back.
“When you start that far back, you need to try to get by the guys ahead of you as quickly as you can,” he said, when asked about producing yet another overtaking masterclass in Brazil after his feats of recent years.
“I do think that first stint went really, really well. We got very quickly back into the top 10, and I think the pace wasn’t bad.
“But, as soon as I switched to the slicks, I had an extreme amount of oversteer in the car, in the high-speed corners, which made it super difficult to drive.
“So we need to understand if something broke on the car, some kind of aero loss or whatever, because this was not normal.
“So I sit here, of course, very happy with second. But at the same time, I know there was more in it if the car had been in a good shape. And yeah, unfortunately, that was not the case.
“I actually did most of the race in a car that was not in a good shape. So yeah, to sit there being second is fantastic.
“Maybe next year I would love to start maybe a bit further up front instead of starting from the back or the pit lane. But yeah, we’ll find out next year. But yeah, it’s been good.
“I mean, in the wet, it’s probably also; it gives you a few more opportunities to get by cars, and you can do some different lines and more opportunities.
“So that definitely helped me today, but we also have to understand why or what went wrong with the car.
“As soon as we went to the slick tyres, I saw that even when I went back to the inter tyres at the end, the car was like night and day different to my first, which shows that there is something wrong.”
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With Verstappen so rapidly climbing up into the points positions, first impressions may have been that the Red Bull driver rocketed off the line, similarly to how Lewis Hamilton did from his 20th place grid slot just ahead of the Dutchman.
But Verstappen could only watch as Hamilton powered clear initially, as the four-time F1 World Champion actually had quite a steady start and first few corners.
“To be honest, I had a very slow reaction time off the line because I was holding the clutch wrong, so I had to react very quickly, and then I was slow off the line, and so that was my mistake,” he said.
“But then I just got a bit unlucky in the first three corners where they were like… it was just like a traffic jam, like three or four cars in front, blocking basically how much I could pass.
“Actually, Lewis had a very good first lap. He could like really get through those cars. So I was a little bit disappointed that I couldn’t make the same headway.
“But then, within two laps, I was just flying by cars almost every corner. So yeah, we had a lot more grip, I guess, than most in the midfield.
“I don’t know what lap I was in in the top 10, but it just all happened, actually, very quickly.”
With Verstappen having had to come through from the back of the field to finish second, there’s the obvious theory that the Dutch driver could have challenged Norris more strongly had he started closer to the front.
But Red Bull team boss Laurent Mekies said that, while analysis of the issues Verstappen felt needed a closer look, he reckons McLaren was out of touch on pure pace.
“I think, even if you start P2, I think on pace, Lando was anyway a bit faster than us today,” he said.
“Of course, it’s a different story if you start P2 because you have all the first opening laps’ risk-taking, on which Max is unbelievable, but I think they were a bit faster than us today.
“Is it degradation? Is it pure pace? Obviously, they brought another fair bit of an upgrade this weekend again, or is it something else?
“Because you may have heard Max being fairly vocal about the car balance, once we had switched to dry tires, from that point onward, he has been very, very unhappy with car balance, including when we came back to the inters at the very end.
“So we need to analyse what happened there, how much of that is time loss, and whether or not that would have been enough to fight with McLaren.”
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