Verstappen furious with his team in Hungary:”Our big problem was strategy”
Fifth at the finish of the Grand Prix, the Dutchman made numerous radio comments throughout the race. He particularly regretted the strategy adopted by his team, putting him in a defensive position and forcing him to attack and ask too much of his tires.
The situation is becoming more and more worrying for the star driver of Red Bull, who can no longer impose himself in Grand Prix. For the third race in a row, the Dutchman failed to cross the finish line as a winner. Even worse, he didn’t even manage to step on the podium this weekend, blaming this underperformance on unbeatable McLarens and a failed strategy from his team.
Our main problem today (Sunday, editor’s note) was the strategy. We let ourselves be ‘undercut’ every time. It made things very complicated, especially with the tires overheating a lot when following other cars. I tried to climb back as much as possible, but it’s not great to lose places, to fight to come back… We lost so much time each time. The McLarens were unbeatable, but we could have at least finished third », he explained to Canal Plus microphone at the end of the Grand Prix.
This situation is particularly frustrating for the three-time world champion, who openly criticizes his team’s approach during the race. His pit stops systematically after his rivals have put him in a position of weakness, forcing him to make up ground and wear out his tires. This situation has not failed to exasperate him, the Dutchman taking to the radio several times to express his dissatisfaction with his car and the adopted strategy, sometimes pushing his engineer, Gianpiero Lambiase, to remind him to order by describing these behaviors as childishness and inviting him to focus on his driving.
On his part, the Red Bull driver justified himself: “No, I mean, of course I am annoyed, but I have been before. Sometimes, you press the radio button to express your opinion, and that’s what I did today. I was hoping the second pit stop would be wiser, but it wasn’t the case.”
This impetuous nature, though absent in recent years, resurfaced yesterday, probably due to the difficulty of responding to McLaren’s performances, a teammate who is no longer bringing in enough points, and recent technical developments that do not fully satisfy him. Indeed, he frequently complained of brake problems on his RB20 this Sunday.
This frustration reached its peak on the track with a contact with his rival Lewis Hamilton on the 63rd lap. With fresher tires than the Briton, the Dutchman attempted a heavy braking approaching turn 1, but locked up all four wheels, causing a collision with Hamilton’s car. While the latter described the incident as a racing incident, the Red Bull driver believes that the seven-time world champion moved during braking.
Despite his protests, the FIA classified the incident as closed. Now struggling with damaged tires, the Dutchman only finished in fifth place, behind the two McLarens, Hamilton and Charles Leclerc’s Ferrari. A very disappointing result, which he blames on his team.
« It was a very bad race. Everything went wrong and the strategy was simply not good. We know that overtaking here is very difficult and that’s all I had to do during the race. We had to fight and because of that, we lost a lot of time. They let me drive longer, and then I got stuck in traffic with backmarkers. So, I really don’t understand at all, it was really very bad.
With a lead of 51 points, the gap between McLaren and Red Bull is dangerously narrowing at the top of the constructor standings following the double win by the papaya team. Faced with this situation, Christian Horner has announced internal discussions to analyze the errors and try to ease tensions between the team and its star driver. The first signs of this reflection will be visible as early as Spa next weekend.
