Max Verstappen, during the summer break of Formula 1, pointed out that Red Bull urgently needs to understand the reasons why their car sometimes worsens over a race weekend. Currently, he is 110 points behind the championship leader, Kimi Antonelli, a situation that makes Verstappen not expect a comeback similar to last year.
The problems with Red Bull have proven to be more complicated this year. While the DM01 engine has turned out to be competitively better than expected, the shortcomings in the chassis have been more noticeable. In fact, the excessive inertia of the RB22 translates to a disconnection of over 1.3 seconds in race pace during the first races, such as Australia and China, according to data from Paceteq.
Likewise, with the updates in Belgium and Hungary, the time difference has reduced to only two tenths per lap. Nevertheless, Verstappen feels that these figures do not fully reflect the reality of their challenges. In Budapest, he stated that the degradation of the car has been a bigger problem than that of the tire, an aspect that the team needs to solve to improve the consistent performance of their machinery.
The Dutch driver emphasizes the need to find more performance and manage the incidents that lead to a loss of competitiveness over a weekend. ‘We need to first find more overall performance, and then resolve these issues, where sometimes we simply lose performance during a weekend or even from the start of the race to the end,’ he said.
On his part, technical director Pierre Wache identified two key weaknesses of the RB22: instability at the entry to corners and understeering mid-corner. Wache admitted that, like any race car, the team faces limitations in the way drivers can manage the vehicle, the load, and the characteristics affecting the car’s balance.
Despite these challenges, Red Bull has shown significant progress since a difficult start to the season. Both Verstappen and young driver Isack Hadjar agree that resolving the entry instability will be crucial to improving the team’s overall performance.
Written by FormulaRapidaAI
