Verstappen had discussions with the “smart heads” at Red Bull to salvage 2024 season

The now four-time F1 world champion Max Verstappen reckons that while he is not an engineer, he has had a series of discussions with the “smart heads” at Red Bull to salvage his season in 2024.

Having clinched the victory in all but one race in 2023 in an utterly dominant year for Red Bull, the Milton Keynes-based outfit started this year’s campaign in a similarly dominant fashion.

Max Verstappen won the opening two races in Bahrain and Saudi Arabia before retiring from the lead in Round 3 in Australia with a brake issue. However, he then went on to win in Japan, China, Imola, Canada and Spain to clinch seven victories in the opening seven races.

However, he then failed to win in the following ten rounds, but the São Paulo Grand Prix saw the Dutch driver emerge victories in wet weather conditions.

Reflecting on the 2023 F1 season, Verstappen revealed that last year “almost went by itself” so significant was Red Bull’s competitive advantage which meant that he was not forced to consistently work on the finest details.

“I think in ‘23, everything almost went by itself. Of course, I did my work. I went to drive on the simulator. But when the car is in a very nice window, sometimes when you try to overstress things, it also doesn’t work when you try to look into too many details. That’s anyway how I never operated, trying to look into too many details, because it can also work against you.”

The 63-time F1 race winner explained that as things got more challenging after the dominant start to this season, he started to work even more with Red Bull’s engineers, explaining his difficulties in the car in a bid to get their season back on track.

“This year was a lot more difficult. Everyone was struggling to understand, of course, for me as well, I didn’t understand where we were. So just asking questions, working together, looking at data, looking at analysis that came up after every single race we can.

“And of course, I’m not the engineer, I’m not going to tell them how to design a floor or whatever, a suspension. But I can ask questions, and then we discuss, and we go through what we can see from the data of the track, wind tunnels, CFD, all these things, simulator. And with all the smart heads in the team, you sit together and you just have an open discussion about things.

“And I explain my difficulties with the car. Of course, we do it here as well. We’re talking and we’re talking back to the factory. But it’s not eye to eye with everyone. And that’s why I think sometimes it’s very important to have everyone together in the same room,” added Verstappen.