Max Verstappen says his Red Bull’s weakness riding the kerbs around Monaco will hurt the team at other tracks later in the season.
The world champion failed to take pole position for the first time this year in Monaco and is set to start tomorrow’s race from sixth place. He was close to eventual pole-winner Charles Leclerc throughout much of qualifying but a mistake at the first corner on his final run in Q3 left him almost three tenths of a second of a second off the Ferrari driver.
“I’m not disappointed with the position, I’m just disappointed with our performance,” Verstappen told Sky after qualifying. “It’s not something that came as a surprise to me because I knew, of course, our limitations already coming into this weekend.”
He said the team are losing time compared to their rivals in corners where they have to ride the kerbs.
“It’s been bad,” he said. “I can’t take any kerbs. In the middle sector I’m driving around the kerbs and it honestly feels like I’m driving a go-kart with no suspension and no damping. So it’s very difficult for us.
“I felt really comfortable in the high-speed corners, at least that was enjoyable. But in the lows we were just losing too much.”
“You can gain in a few places but we lose out way too much in all the low-speed where it’s bumpy and the car is just jumping around,” he added.
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He is concerned the same problem will compromise the team at some upcoming circuits. “There are a few more tracks coming up where it’s bumpy and you need to ride kerbs,” he said. “So it’s definitely a limitation for us.
“Looking at tomorrow, if it’s just a straightforward race then there’s not that much that you can do. The cars are so wide, so big that you can’t pass. But we’ll just try to stick with them.
“We don’t have the fastest car, it’s not like we qualified out of position. So there’s also not like a pace advantage or whatever that we can use. But we’ll see what happens.”
Verstappen’s team mate Sergio Perez blamed traffic after failing to progress beyond the first round of qualifying.
“We’ve been struggling all the weekend through,” he admitted. “We could not really get on top of what we’ve been doing with the car.
“We’ve been changing a lot. We just couldn’t get in the rhythm in qualifying and that meant that we were just quite far off initially.
“Then on my final lap when things were looking good, I…
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