Set-up “gamble” cost Verstappen in Dutch GP

Christian Horner believes a difference in set-up between Red Bull’s two cars compromised Max Verstappen’s performance in the Dutch Grand Prix.

Verstappen finished 16 seconds ahead of team mate Sergio Perez but 22 seconds behind race winner Lando Norris. Horner said the team were hopeful of contending for victory after Verstappen took the lead at the start, but said the higher downforce level on their lead car ultimately compromised him.

“Having got the lead, you suddenly start to think okay, and he managed to break the DRS, but then it was very clear that suddenly Lando, from lap five, six onwards, started to come back quite hard,” Horner told Viaplay. “And we just didn’t have the pace today.

“I think with hindsight, the gamble that we made with more downforce perhaps wasn’t the best route. Looking at Checo’s pace, it looked like it was easier to him in the second half of the race.

“But congratulations to Lando and McLaren, they were very quick today. We’ve got work to do to get more pace.”

Verstappen was dissatisfied with his car’s handling from the beginning of the event. “The whole weekend has been the same,” he said. “I had pretty much the same balance from FP1 all the way to the race.

“The limitations are the same. It’s just very hard to solve at the moment.”

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He was the only driver in the field who took two new sets of hard compound tyres into the race. “It just seems like we are too slow, but also quite bad on deg at the moment,” he explained. “That’s a bit weird because I think the last few years normally we’ve been quite good on that.

“So something has been going wrong lately with the car that we need to understand and we need to, of course, quickly try to improve.”

Although he held the lead for the first 17 laps, Verstappen said it soon became clear he couldn’t contain Norris.

“I was just doing my own race, looking after the tyres, I tried to do the best I could,” he said. “But at one point nothing was turning or responding anymore.

“So then Lando got quite close. The first time he was close, but not close enough. Then the next lap, there was nothing that I could do.

“So once he passed, I just focused on doing my race, tried to bring it to the end in second.”

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