Red Bull meeting called as Max Verstappen faces Brazilian GP penalty blow

Max Verstappen faces another potential setback to contend with at the Brazilian Grand Prix, as Red Bull consider making “drastic” changes to the RB21.

Red Bull senior advisor Helmut Marko has called a team meeting to determine the best course of action after Verstappen suffered a shock Q1 elimination at Interlagos. Should Red Bull make further changes to the RB21, it would see Verstappen go from 16th on the grid to a pit-lane start.

Max Verstappen facing Brazilian GP pit-lane start?

In a stunning turn of events at the Brazilian Grand Prix, Verstappen was unable to progress beyond the first part of qualifying, an exit brought about by a pure lack of pace.

Teammate Yuki Tsunoda also failed to make the Q2 cut in a disastrous qualifying for Red Bull.

The cars came back out of parc ferme conditions between the Sprint and qualifying, with Red Bull taking a wrong turn. Marko has therefore called a team meeting to decide whether they continue down this path, or overhaul the RB21 setup again for the race.

Doing so would be a breach of the parc ferme regulations, and would force Verstappen to start from the pit lane, with his hopes of a fifth consecutive Drivers’ Championship now very much hanging in the balance.

“We now have to see what we are going to do about this situation,” Marko told ORF. “Whether, for example, we are going to make drastic changes again.

“That would mean we would have to start from the pit-lane.

“But before we do that, we need to sit down together and calmly consider what the best option is.”

Reflecting with Sky Deutschland on a bruising Brazilian GP qualifying for Red Bull, Marko added: “It went badly wrong. We slowed down everywhere.

“The circuit got faster and we lost time in all sectors. In fact, there was even less grip. Why? We need to find that out now. But the damage has been done. Now we’ll see what we can still make of it. But it doesn’t look good.”

Red Bull had been a team revitalised in recent rounds. Verstappen is on a run of six consecutive podium finishes, a streak which included Italian, Azerbaijan and United States GP victory.

But, a dent was put in that momentum last time out in Mexico. Only a masterful execution of the one-stop strategy from Verstappen, who kept his soft tyres alive, allowed him to keep the podium run going, in a race dominated by championship leader Lando Norris.

“We brought new parts or partially new parts to Mexico, which did not deliver the hoped-for success,” Marko admitted. “Based on that, we thought we would find the right direction, but that has not been the case either.

“So we have to look at where we took the wrong turn. Because this gap… Especially the fact that we lost time in Sectors 1 and 3, while the gap in Sector 2 remained the same. That means we didn’t gain anything there, but we clearly lost out to the others.”

More key Brazilian GP talking points from PlanetF1.com

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Red Bull team boss Laurent Mekies admitted that a “painful” price was paid for taking a bold approach with the RB21 for Brazil qualifying.

“It’s fair to say that we took some more risk before qualifying to try to see if we could put the car in a better place and it obviously went the opposite direction,” he told Sky F1. “So, that’s where we are now.

“It’s sometimes the price you pay when you take a risk, you cannot always go your way. It’s painful, but it’s something we can learn from and improve.”

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