Max Verstappen says Red Bull are finding it difficult to work out where they have gone wrong with their car during the 2024 season.
Red Bull enjoyed a significant performance advantage over their rivals in the opening rounds of the championship but McLaren soon closed the gap and Mercedes emerged as another threat before the summer break.
Verstappen admitted his car’s balance has deteriorated since the season began as the team has tried to extract more performance from its RB20.
“It wasn’t there in the first few races,” said Verstappen after finishing a distant second to McLaren’s Lando Norris last weekend. “But something in the car has made it more difficult to drive.
“It’s very hard to pinpoint where that is coming from at the moment. And that is then hurting our one-lap performance, but also our long run.”
McLaren and Mercedes have won all of the last five races, resulting in Verstappen’s longest win-less stretch since the end of 2020.
“That happens,” he said. “I’ve had a lot of good years. Some people have never won a race in their career, so you can also look at it like that.
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“From my side, we at the moment don’t have the fastest car. We have some issues that we have to solve and we are working on that. That’s the only thing I can say about that.
“We’re very focused on it. There’s still a lot of races left, a lot of different kinds of tracks. This weekend was just not our best weekend.”
Verstappen expects a much tougher race at Monza this weekend than last year, when he scored a record-breaking tenth consecutive victory. He said the resurfacing done at the track since then makes it harder to predict how competitive they will be.
“We just need to figure out our balance issues,” he said. “I think that will already help a lot also with [tyre degradation].
“Of course, in Monza, a lot is new. Tarmac, kerbs, even the layout in turn one-two. So also that we need to understand a bit more, but we know that we have quite a bit of work to do.”
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2024 Dutch Grand Prix
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