Max Verstappen doesn’t see any fault with the car after F1 Australian GP issue, as he and Sergio Perez hope for trouble-free Japanese GP.
A reliability trouble for Red Bull especially Verstappen has been a rarity in the current times. It took 43 races for the Dutchman to suffer a retirement in Australian GP, as a loss came early for him and the team in 2024 unlike in 2023.
It was down to the brake caliper and there were already signs on Saturday as per Verstappen, who is fairly confident that the car wasn’t at fault and they should be fine for this weekend’s Japanese GP – which is a semi home event for Red Bull Honda.
“I think we saw already some signs on Saturday where things were maybe not looking like they should have done,” said Verstappen. “Of course, then now in hindsight, yeah, you can say that it was coming from the brake caliper. But yeah, we couldn’t find any, let’s say, fault with the car, which in a way, I mean, it’s of course always bad to retire, but of course when you have a fault in maybe the build spec or whatever, then it’s a bit worse.
“So yeah, we’ll just move on from there and learn from it that it doesn’t happen again, but normally it shouldn’t,” summed up Verstappen, who isn’t taking the situation as last year when he arrived in Japan after suffering a loss in Singapore. Although it is another loss, but the circumstances are different.
“Every year is different, but also, last year we had a bit of a difficult weekend in Singapore,” said Verstappen. “I think if you look at Melbourne performance-wise, I think we were quick, but we didn’t finish the race. So that’s not ideal, but our car normally likes you know the higher speed corners, so hopefully that we can show that again this weekend.”
While the Dutchman had his issue, teammate Perez also had his own set of troubles in Australia when a tear-off got stuck under his car. Post the DNF of Verstappen, all eyes were on the Mexican, who was on a recovery drive where a podium was on the cards.
His drive was hampered after he passed Fernando Alonso. But having looked at the data, Perez doesn’t think he would have won the grand prix, whether or not the tear-off got stuck. Red Bull has issues at front-limited circuits and are keen to solve it.
“It [tear-off] definitely affected quite a bit, the pace,” said Perez to media. “It had a big effect in the result probably, given where I started with the penalty P6, and just the gap I had to the leaders, the strategy, and the graining I had on the first stint, probably, I wouldn’t have won the race even without the damage. And with Max, it is hard to know but we were certainly not able to control graining as much as we would have liked to.
“We had that before, for example in Vegas which is front-limited track. I think it is just important that we learn what happened in Melbourne, with the things we can do in our control like with the set-up, with the tyres, but I think we had our suspicions that probably that wasn’t the right way to cure the graining,” summed up Perez.
FIA details circuit changes, DRS zone & more for Japanese GP
Here’s Christian Horner on Red Bull driver situation
Here’s Christian Horner expands on Red Bull’s off-colour showing
Here’s Sergio Perez being unaware of tear-off stuck
Here’s Max Verstappen, Christian Horner on race-ending streak
Here’s link to a F1 Discord channel, join in to interact