Verstappen having “too many problems” in “more difficult” season · F1 · RaceFans

Too many things are going wrong for Red Bull, says Max Verstappen despite scoring his sixth grand prix victory from the first nine rounds yesterday.

Verstappen came from second on the grid to win the race but missed a significant amount of practice time on Friday due to problem with his power unit. He has also been unhappy with his RB20’s performance over kerbs and bumps in recent races.

“The last few races have been quite difficult,” he said after Sunday’s race. “But not only just difficult, too many problems as well, throughout the whole weekend. So we need to have a cleaner weekend.

“Even in the race now, we’re struggling a lot with the kerbing and the bumps. So we definitely have an area we can work on and definitely improve the car by quite a big margin if we get that under control.”

He routed the competition on the way to his third world championship last year, winning all bar three of the 22 grands prix. But Verstappen says the team is not functioning as smoothly this year.

“I think we are all very focused. We are still doing a lot of things right. But for whatever reason, we are not in that same flow as we had last year where everything just seemed to be going really well for us at most places, no reliability issues. For whatever reason, it’s all a bit more difficult this year.

“Some things are a bit hard to explain as well. Sometimes it almost feels like you’re a bit in a spiral and it maybe takes a bit of time to get out of it.”

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However he is confident they can solve the problems they have. “We are for sure on top of everything. Of course, there are always things that you can do better. But we’ll come out of this week and analyse everything again and try to improve.”

He was pleased with the team’s performance during yesterday’s taxing race, where changing weather conditions and Safety Car periods meant the pit wall had to react quickly.

“I definitely think as a team we did make the right calls today,” he said. “And that, of course, is also very important.”

With the resurgence of Mercedes last weekend, Red Bull now potentially face competition for victories from up to three teams, which Verstappen says he is enjoying.

“It’s definitely more challenging. And I think also with how the race was today, it was very exciting in general.”