Max Verstappen expands on his frustration in F1 Hungarian GP with strategy and pace, as Christian Horner adds on the team’s side.
It was indeed frustrating time all-around for Red Bull and Verstappen in F1 Hungarian GP. Already ahead of the race, they were on the backfoot against the pace of McLaren, not just with the one car but both their cars of Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri.
Verstappen was realistic about his no win chance, but expected a minimum third barring anything happens to McLaren. The Dutchman’s frustration already started from Lap 1 when he went off track to clear Norris and was eventually asked to give the place back.
While tucked behind the McLaren cars, Red Bull went defensive with its strategy i.e to go long on the first stint to have fresher tyres in the stints to follow and pass their rivals on track. He only had Mercedes’ Lewis Hamilton to pass at that stage of the race.
But it proved to be difficult and it brought Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc in the game. Red Bull lost out to both and Verstappen had to pass both the cars in order to regain third and in doing so, he had a tangle with Hamilton, which eventually cost him fourth as well.
Throughout that sequence, Verstappen sent out angry radio messages and stuck to his guns post-race regarding the strategy choices. The ruthless Dutchman was seen off track as well, as he defended himself by shutting off his critics over his radio ranting.
Horner, meanwhile, tried to play down the radio chatter between Verstappen and his engineer Gianpiero Lambiase. Apart from the usual debrief, he felt both are matured enough to handle their matter, but he clarified the ‘childish’ message was for their rivals.
He expanded on the strategy situation as to what Red Bull were trying to achieve amid lack of pace to fight against McLaren. Horner defended Verstappen’s late nighter while competing in the ESports race and even addressed about the Red Bull harmony.
Race –
Verstappen: “Yes, tough, of course we didn’t have the pace to fight McLaren today but then we could have still had a P3. The wrong strategy calls put me on the backfoot where I constantly had to fight people, trying to overtake, and it didn’t work today. The track is really hot and as soon as you get close to cars the tyres overheat and basically all of the advantage that you have with the tyres is not working anymore. As for the Lap 1 incident, looking back at it, it wouldn’t have mattered anyway because they were quite a bit faster.”
Horner: “Well, it was very hard to follow in the dirty air, probably more so than we expected. Obviously at the start he made a position. We felt that it was a racing incident. Three had got into the corner and actually ran out of road and under the let them race mantra, we thought it looked okay. But as soon as it goes to the stewards, at that point the feeling is that you’re probably going to get a penalty. So that’s why we conceded the place back to Lando. So then you’re really in the dirty air. And Lewis with his two sets of hard tyres went very early. We were considering going that early, but at that point you’re racing for third. And with the two hard tyres, he had the ability to shuffle his race that early. So we felt go longer, give an over overlap advantage.
“And actually on the hard tyre, you can see that Max was competitive, he was strong, certainly compared to McLaren. So he caught Lewis quickly. Then unfortunately in the dirty air got stuck as Lewis started to really drop off. So if we’d have got past Lewis at that point, then we may have been able to have a go at one of the McLarens at the end of the race. Because of the wake and being stuck in the dirty air and dropping off, both he and Charles pit early again, so we then go for a nine lap overlap and you can see, again, his pace is very, very strong, catches him quickly, picks off Leclerc. A racing incident with Lewis is probably the best way to describe it. And then we picked up some damage after the car’s gone through the air. A frustrating race. when you look at the race plot now, it’s ifs, buts and maybes. Probably the thing we underestimated was how tricky it was in the dirty air. And it was that section of the race there that did the most damage to us.”
Pace expected after Friday –
Verstappen: “I don’t know. I already said after Saturday that maybe some people are not on the same wavelength. It is as severe as it is. I felt it coming, Sunday was also hot again and when you don’t have a good balance you cannot look after the tyres and that’s the problem.”
Strategy calls –
Verstappen: “Yes, the strategy, well, the car I knew it was already going to be a difficult race and that beating McLaren would be tough. But you need at least to get a P3 over the line and even that we couldn’t do. I don’t know [why they did]. I have to speak to the team about the why and the how. We didn’t realise that following was so hard.
Radio chatter with engineer –
Verstappen: “I’ve had it before. I don’t agree with that [it was worse than normal], but I was just annoyed and maybe the team, at the time, didn’t realise what they did wrong or maybe didn’t see it was so severe but in the car you have different feelings. Of course I am annoyed but I have been annoyed before, sometimes you press the radio to voice your opinion and that is what I did. We hoped that maybe the second pitstop would be a better call, but it wasn’t, but for me that is not distracting when I drive. Of course I am annoyed but you also then focus back on what you have to do and that is to control the car.”
Horner: “Max was frustrated, which you can understand. He has a very direct line of communication with his engineer. That’s something they’ll discuss between the two of them. And no, GP at that point [regarding childish] actually wasn’t referring to Max. He was referring to others on the radio complaining about penalties. Others obviously were asking for penalties, because obviously the stewards are listening to the radio as well. Look, they’ve been together for eight years and there’s things that we could have done better in the race, but it’s something that we’ll talk about as a team.
Debrief, critics –
Verstappen: “We always have a debrief, like always, same stuff. [And as for critics] they can all f**** off.”
Horner: “That’s something in for the debrief. Everybody sees that we need to find more performance. And everybody’s working hard to do that. So we’ll have whatever discussions behind closed doors.”
Upgrades frustrating, pushing hard –
Horner: “We have to look at all the data, now that we have it, and look at obviously where we need to optimize, where we’re not getting the performance that we obviously want to achieve. As a team we work hard to continue to improve the car. It’s not something that isn’t static. It’s constantly working. There’s obviously a team of people that are back in the UK that are working incredibly hard. And it was a big effort to bring this upgrade for this race. And there are some positives from that and obviously we’ll look to apply that moving forward. The car is a different specification again next weekend.”
Weekend schedule, staying up late for sim race –
Horner: “Look, he knows exactly what’s required in a Grand Prix and we trust his judgement in that. People draw conclusions. Max is, you know, he knows what’s required, he knows what it takes to drive a Grand Prix car and to win Grand Prix’s and be a world champion. And look, as a team, we always work as a team, and whatever discussions of how to improve the car, will always not take place through media.”
Harmony within the team, Jos in garage –
Horner: “Look, everything is focused on going racing and where we have a tight championship battle, you can see that everybody in the team is focused on making sure that all the energy is going into optimizing our performance as a team, developing the car, getting the most out of the race weekends.”
Here’s Max Verstappen moment with Lando Norris: https://www.formula1.com/en/video/2024-hungarian-grand-prix-verstappen-protests-on-the-radio-but-lets-norris-past-for-p2.1805196265414191927
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