Red Bull ‘gets discovered’ by F1 rivals as gap narrows

Verstappen struggled throughout testing on the numerous curbs and bumps of the tight Monaco street circuit.

And while the Red Bull team overcame their training woes last week at Imola, there was little they could do to give Verstappen and teammate Sergio Perez an RB20 that could beat Ferrari or McLaren in qualifying.

Verstappen’s first flight of Q3 was good for third, but after brushing against the wall at Ste Devote at Turn 1, the Dutchman was unable to complete a second lap, finishing sixth, three tenths behind Ferrari pole-sitter, Charles Leclerc.

Regardless, Verstappen said he wasn’t looking for pole with a car that couldn’t handle the bumps.

“We tried a lot of things on the car and literally nothing made it better, so you’re just stuck,” Verstappen said when asked by Motorsport.com to explain his suspension problems.

“In the second sector we are really bad, just because I can’t hit any curbs because it disrupts the car way too much. You just lose a lot of lap time and it’s incredibly difficult.

Max Verstappen, Red Bull Racing RB20

Photo by: Erik Junius

“We went for softer stuff for everything, but the car is like a go-kart. It’s like I’m racing without suspension, so it jumps a lot; it doesn’t absorb curbs, bumps or changes camber.

“In the last corner, I think the number of times I almost jumped into the wall was really amazing.”

Verstappen says Red Bull’s problems in Monaco are not much different from the low-speed handling problems on bumpy tracks he has encountered over the past two years with the ground-effect machines, which his difficult weekend of the 2023 Singapore Grand Prix already foreshadowed.

But while Red Bull always had a faster car that could mask these problems, the three-time world champion believes it is now being felt on bumpy circuits as Ferrari and McLaren have all but closed the gap.

“This is not something new, we have had this problem since 2022,” Verstappen explained.

“Of course, in recent years we have had an advantage in the car, so that is masked a bit because we gain in the corners where the curbs and bumps are not really a limitation.

“But when everyone is catching up, naturally, when you don’t improve your weakest point, you get found out and that’s what happened this weekend.”