Verstappen highlights Red Bull Achilles’ heel against F1 rivals
Max Verstappen has underlined the areas in which Red Bull cannot currently compete against McLaren and Ferrari, after qualifying on the front row for the Mexico City Grand Prix.
The Italian team, courtesy of Carlos Sainz, will start from pole at the Autodromo Hermanos Rodriguez. Charles Leclerc starts fourth, with Verstappen and Lando Norris in between.
However, both their team-mates were knocked out of qualifying in Q1, so will be fighting the Scuderia one-handed.
Crucially for Verstappen, he starts ahead of his drivers’ championship rival after extending his lead in the title race for the first time since the Belgian Grand Prix last time out at the Circuit of the Americas.
Red Bull, having looked a shell of its former self in recent months, appears to have provided a renewed package following its upgrades at the United States Grand Prix.
In doing so, it helped vault Verstappen back to the sharp end of the field, with the Dutchman winning his first race – albeit a sprint – since June.
Reflecting on how those updates have improved the RB20, the 27-year-old told Dutch media including RacingNews365: “[We have] slightly more balance, but of course the problem is still in that we are bad on the kerbs and bumps – there the car just bounces around too long, especially compared to Ferrari.
“But on the other hand, McLaren also really has a lot of grip. They might not be the very best over the kerbs either, but they really have an incredible balance in the slow and medium-fast corners that we can’t replicate yet.”
Latest Red Bull upgrades not a fix-all solution
Red Bull is teetering on the brink of losing its constructors’ crown, having already been knocked off its perch atop the standings by McLaren.
The papaya squad leads by 40 points with five rounds to run and if it can hold out, will win a first constructors’ title since 1998.
Ferrari, meanwhile, is just eight points adrift of the Milton Keynes team and as the in-form outfit in F1, looks to be the more likely one to battle McLaren for the championship over the rest of the year.
That is in large part due to Red Bull remaining unable to address its long-standing kerb and bump-riding issue, even if the balance is better than it was.
When asked about its latest upgrades, Verstappen explained that the Austin update was to counteract the lattermost issues, which Red Bull established at the Italian Grand Prix in September, rather than the problems that has plagued the team for most of the season.
“Well, [it is] more because we had found a problem after Monza,” he said. “So, it’s also more about correcting that, then we come to the next problems what we already had.”
“So the slow corners and the bumps and kerbs. We keep working on it, but some things are not very easy to solve. If you don’t know it, or don’t see it, it’s hard to adjust it.”
