Red Bull swapped passes to fix Verstappen’s car

Finley Crebolder
Max Verstappen PA

Max Verstappen PA

In order to get all the required personnel to the grid to work on Max Verstappen’s car, Red Bull staff continually swapped access passes.

Disaster struck for the team when the Dutchman crashed his car on the way to the grid before the Hungarian Grand Prix.

It looked as if his race had ended before it even started. However, Red Bull had other ideas and managed to fix the car in the half an hour before the race got underway.

Getting to the grid is harder than ever this year due to social distancing rules. In order for all the right people to get to the car in Hungary, the team had to exchange access passes with each other, according to Helmut Marko.

“The man in charge assured me that it would work out. The guys worked with incredible precision and speed. Every move was right,” he told Auto Motor und Sport.

“We still had to exchange access passes among the mechanics, because not everyone had permission to start. For example, the specialist who uses a scanner to examine the carbon parts for damage.”

“What was achieved was incredible. There are still strengths in our team.”

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Verstappen went on to finish in an impressive P2, managing to stay ahead of the Mercedes of Valtteri Bottas due to taking one less pit-stop to the Finn. Just a day before however, the Red Bulls were leaps and bounds behind their German rival as they only qualified P7 and P12.

Despite the considerable difference in outright pace between the two teams, the head of Red Bull’s driver development programme is optimistic heading to Silverstone. Specifically, he feels race pace and strategy should keep Mercedes in reach.

“We should be stronger there,” the Austrian added.

“You cannot implement the speed from the qualification in the race. And in terms of strategy, you are still not that far.”

“We are investigating and checking in every direction how we can get to Mercedes.”

As for why Red Bull is so much slower than Lewis Hamilton, Bottas and co, Christian Horner has stated that the RB16 has aerodynamic issues which are causing it to “misbehave”. However, he’s remaining optimistic and feels that it “won’t take much” to deal with such issues.

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