Max Verstappen says Red Bull need to completely overhaul their car before the next round of the championship in Bahrain.
The championship leader could only manage a sixth-place finish in today’s Italian Grand Prix, 37 seconds behind winner Charles Leclerc. One week earlier at Zandvoort he finished 22 seconds behind race winner Lando Norris.
The team has struggled with its car in recent races. Verstappen was puzzled by the changes in its balance during qualifying yesterday, where he looked competitive in Q2 but slipped to seventh place on the grid.
“It’s really bad at the moment,” he told the official F1 website after the race. “Before Baku, we have a lot of work to do to basically change the whole car.”
Besides the car’s performance, Verstappen was also unhappy with his team’s strategy during the race. He was locked into a two-stop strategy early on as Red Bull fitted a second set of hard tyres at his first pit stop.
Verstappen was also frustrated by a slow tyre change at his first pit stop, and punched his steering wheel as he rejoined the track. He lost more time with a loss of power from his engine.
Speaking afterwards Vertappen said he “wasn’t really frustrated throughout the race, I was just doing my own race.” But he admitted “the pace was not there.”
“We had a bad pit stop. I think that our strategy was not on point today, even though of course it wouldn’t have changed our position. I think we could have done a better race in general.
“It doesn’t help that you can’t run full power for most of the race with the engine, because we had an issue. So all in all, a pretty bad race.”
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2024 Italian Grand Prix
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