F1 | Red Bull, tension grows: nothing works on the RB20

The alarm was sounded in the Red Bull garage. There have been other occasions in recent months in which the world champion team has found itself struggling with problems, but Friday in Singapore was the worst of the season. The summary of the day is in the words of Helmut Marko. “Nothing works on Max’s car, both on the soft and hard tyres he has no grip, and the balance is also terrible.” Sergio Perez finished FP2 in eighth position, Max Verstappen in fifteenth, more than a second behind Lando Norris’s best time of the day.

In the second free practice session, Verstappen repeatedly reported to the pits that he had no traction exiting corners, a very serious handicap on a stop-and-go track like Marina Bay. After the first free practice session (which he finished in fourth place), Max took to the track with a lighter set-up, making the situation worse. His time in FP2 was the same as in the first session, sliding to the back of the group. The tyres did not ‘light up’, and in Verstappen’s case, the choice to give up a bit of aerodynamic load complicated things even more. An error can happen, but it is striking how the Red Bull technicians (traditionally very good at predicting the evolution of the track) have recently been struggling with incorrect assessments.

“We don’t have the grip we need to have,” Verstappen confirmed. “It feels like we’re sliding, and I think we saw that in FP2. We didn’t have any issues with the bumps and kerbs (the obstacle that conditioned Red Bull’s weekend at Marina Bay last year) but rather with the grip of the tyres. We need to go back, analyse the data and see what we can do to optimise the performance before qualifying.” It will be a long night for the engineers on track as well as for the working group operating in Milton Keynes.

“At the moment I would say it’s very worrying,” Marko admitted. “At this point we will have to try something drastic. We can’t accept this, we need to fix things to make sure we are more competitive. I just looked at the FP2 data and we are at the same pace as Colapinto…” It was pointed out to Marko that Verstappen’s pace was slower than Yuki Tsunoda’s. “They didn’t bring anything new here,” Marko confirmed of Racing Bull. “But we saw that Yuki was incredibly fast on the hard tyres. I have no explanation.”

The only (timid) smile at Red Bull came from Sergio Perez. Nothing particularly exciting, but Checo confirmed that he was overall more performing than Verstappen. “We improved a bit compared to FP1 – he confirmed – but the non-optimal balance makes it difficult to put together a lap. We definitely have some work to do during the night, because we are a second from the leaders, so we need a fairly big change to be able to do it”.

The tension is starting to grow. After losing the lead in the constructors’ standings, Red Bull knows it cannot afford any more missteps if it wants to keep Verstappen in a comfortable position in the drivers’ standings. Max can afford to lose points to Norris, but only if he stays in his slipstream, certainly not in the lower part of the top 10. The impression is that tomorrow we will see a car with a profoundly revised setup on the track, a risky but also necessary choice. The Red Bull seen today is not the car that can allow Verstappen to continue his path (even uphill) towards the fourth world title.