Max Verstappen’s frustration and anger at the performance of his Red Bull car at the Italian Grand Prix was almost visceral. The world champion is unafraid to speak his mind and he did so to damning effect in Monza, condemning the car as an undriveable monster that might cost him a fourth title. This might be considered hyperbole were it not for the fact that Verstappen has been warning of this for months and Red Bull still have no solution, which suggests the Dutchman may be right and they do have a real problem.
Verstappen qualified seventh in Monza and finished sixth in a race where the winner, Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc, and the two McLarens of Oscar Piastri and Lando Norris in second and third were in a different league, more than 30 seconds clear of the Red Bull. Verstappen’s teammate Sergio Pérez described their car as handling like a boat, about as damning an indictment as any driver can give to a thoroughbred F1 car.
Verstappen still holds a 62-point advantage over Norris with eight races remaining, but his warning that both titles were now “not realistic” given the state of the car is tenable, especially given McLaren are now just eight points off Red Bull in the constructors’ championship. The scale of this turnabout in fortune is hard to comprehend, doubtless not least at Red Bull. As the season opened, Verstappen won seven of the opening ten meetings when he was enjoying leads of over 20 seconds on the field, a canter to the title appeared all but a formality.
Yet what Monza and the preceding races have proved is that the wheels have come off the machine. Conspiracy theorists have made much of the FIA declaring the use of an asymmetric braking system illegal and it was even reported Red Bull had been using such a system but the team were not, nor does their supposed removal of said system correlate with the downturn in form.
The real issue they have, which has become increasingly clear since it was first noticeable at the Miami GP in early May, is that the car now fundamentally lacks balance. The front and rear are not working in sync, meaning the car’s behaviour is unpredictable and it cannot be pushed through the corners. Attempts to compensate for it in turn create oversteer, which subsequently works the tyres harder creating degradation and grip problems.
The issues appear to have arisen as a result of the upgrades the team have been bringing in the lead up to and since Miami that have created this disconnect. They are not delivering what the data from wind tunnel testing suggested they would and they have become progressively worse with each attempt to solve them.
The team have had to try to improve their package because standing still is not an option. Having been so dominant for two years Red Bull are reaching the limitations of how much more they can eke out of the design of the car but are having to push hard to do so because McLaren have surpassed them and both Mercedes and Ferrari are now champing at their heels.
Verstappen’s anger is partly fuelled by the fact that he identified this to the team as far back as Miami and he feels they did not address it soon enough or with enough zeal. Worse still it cannot be written off as a track-specific issue. Pérez said the problems they were experiencing in Monza were very similar to those they had at the previous round in Zandvoort and the two circuits could not be more diametrically different. Monza a low-downforce, high-speed sweep and the Dutch race a high-downforce series of largely tight corners.
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Pushed to find more by the advance of their rivals then, Red Bull have instead found only limitations, as the Red Bull team principal, Christian Horner, observed. “As we’ve pushed the package harder, it’s exposed the issue,” he said. What concerns Verstappen and the team is that they have still not found a solution and that Horner admitted it was “confusing” them was certainly not the reassurance the world champion wanted to hear.
The team held crunch talks in Monza on Saturday to try to find a way forward but with Baku and Singapore coming up, neither of which are going to present an easy challenge for their car, they can expect little respite.
Moreover while Verstappen’s lead is still a healthy advantage it may not be the cushion he requires. While calculations based on Norris beating Verstappen into second at each remaining race made it an unlikely target and only just surpassable, that scenario may no longer be the case.
At Monza the Red Bull was beaten by both McLarens, both Ferraris and a Mercedes. If the trend is toward Norris maximising points against a fourth- or fifth-place finish for Verstappen, that points differential is going to begin to swing toward the British driver more swiftly and Verstappen fired that broadside at his team because he knows it.