Red Bull form still too “hit and miss” despite Miami win

While Red Bull’s 2022 on-track performance has hit a new high, Verstappen defeating Ferrari’s polesitter Charles Leclerc by virtue of better top speed and tyre management on Sunday, the Milton Keynes outfit continued to suffer from various problems across the weekend.

After being limited to 14 laps in FP1, Verstappen only completed one lap of Friday FP2 when first a gearbox change caused him to miss the start, only for a fresh hydraulics issue to keep him in the garage again.

Teammate Sergio Perez looked set to benefit from a late tyre switch under the safety car, but a power loss on his engine meant he couldn’t pass the second Ferrari of Carlos Sainz for third, despite the Spaniard being stuck on old hard tyres.

Red Bull came to Miami after a near flawless weekend in Imola where it took a dominant 1-2 win. But previously both cars retired from Bahrain’s season opener and Verstappen suffered another retirement in Australia.

While Verstappen leading Leclerc 3-2 in wins after five races is an ominous sign of the team’s competitiveness, the Dutchman’s two DNFs meant he should have been in the lead of the championship rather than trailing Leclerc by 19 points.

Speaking after the race, Verstappen urged his team to find a way to regularly repeat Imola’s trouble-free weekend, acknowledging the team’s operations are “still hit and miss too much”.

“On my side I had a lot of issues on Friday, which compromises your weekend, and especially yesterday,” Verstappen said.

“Of course, today everything went well with the start, but it also could have been the other way around. And then you of course can say like, well, fair enough, because if you missed almost a whole Friday, what can you do about it?

“We just have to nail down a really positive weekend without issues. I think of course, Imola, we had that, but it’s still a bit of a hit and miss too much, so we…