Red Bull declares that Max Verstappen could not catch up with Lando Norris in the race
For the second time this season, Max Verstappen did not win. According to Red Bull, it was impossible for him to catch up with the McLaren driver, due to damage on his car.
Max Verstappen found himself unable to keep up with the pace of Lando Norris when the safety car pulled in during the Miami Grand Prix last Sunday. The Dutch driver attributed his lack of pace to the difficulties he had encountered throughout the weekend and his discomfort with the hard tires he had changed during the Safety Car period.
Red Bull revealed that the world champion’s car had damage to the underbody, probably after hitting a cone on the curbs of the chicane where he collided with a cone, on lap 22. Red Bull team principal Christian Horner said: “I don’t think we had a good balance all weekend. Obviously, he hit the cone around lap 20 and it actually caused quite a bit of damage to the underside of the car, we will have to assess the extent of the damage.”
Max Verstappen stated that his rhythm issues were due to the setup and tires and he believes that there was no damage. “I never really felt comfortable all weekend with it,” he said.
« I think that on the medium tires, it was still okay, but with the hard ones, it was a bit catastrophic. I mean, I had low grip in the slow corners. I couldn’t really rely on the rear, whereas in fast corners, I had a lot of understeer. So, when you have these two issues, you can’t balance them out because you’re pursuing two different objectives. So yes, I was just driving based on the grip I had and it wasn’t much.
A Red Bull a little below
Speaking of the incident with the cone, he added: “I didn’t like it, so I decided to remove it and test the durability of the fin as well. So it was a crash test done. There was no damage. The cone was out of the way for everyone, so it was practically survival of the fittest after that.”
Regarding the drop in pace due to the damage, Verstappen replied: “I didn’t feel any difference, so I don’t know. Maybe it was already damaged. I don’t know. I mean I hit that thing and then my pace was the same so I didn’t really know if there was any damage.”
Horner had explained that their race data showed that Verstappen was significantly lacking in performance in turn 1, which would explain Norris’ advantage. « He was losing two or three tenths on each lap in turn 1. Whether it was due to damage or not, when you actually see the images of what was missing, it wasn’t planned like that. »
