Max Verstappen said he simply needs Red Bull’s upgrade for the Hungarian Grand Prix to unlock more “pure pace” from the RB20.
The reigning world champions enter the second half of the season under fierce pressure from McLaren and Mercedes. The latter claimed victory in the last two races and locked out the front row of the grid at Silverstone.
Red Bull have only set the outright quickest lap time once in the last five race weekends. Verstappen says the upgrade they will introduce at the Hungaroring needs to deliver a clear improvement in performance.
“I think we’re just lacking pure pace,” he told Sky. “And then, when you’re trying to compensate pure pace, then of course naturally you have more tyre wear, it’s more difficult to find the sweet spot with the car. So just overall pace would help.”
Although Red Bull’s rivals have enjoyed the benefit of more development time under F1’s Aerodynamic Testing Rules, Verstappen did not cite that as a reason why his team’s lead has narrowed in recent races. “If we knew [why] that [was], we would have changed that,” he said.
“That’s always very difficult to know why or how. You just focus on what we can control. We try to do the best we can, and hopefully this weekend will push us a little bit forward.”
Verstappen used the only example of the team’s new specification floor at Silverstone. They are expected to bring further parts this weekend.
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McLaren have out-scored Red Bull in five of the last six races and lie 78 points behind with 573 available over the remainder of the season. Their driver Oscar Piastri believes they have a chance to catch Red Bull over the rest of the season.
“I think we’re confident in our whole team, drivers, car, everyone around us,” he said. “We’ve scored the most points of any team in the last six races.
“We’re making up ground on everyone around us. Obviously, the gap to Ferrari now in the constructors’ championship is very small. We’re reducing it to Red Bull – of course, at the moment, it’s really only Max scoring most of the points there. I think we can’t take for granted that it’s always going to be like that.
“We need to still be maximising what we can do to score the most points for both cars. But we’re definitely confident that we’re in the fight. I think it would be…
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