Fourth title in danger
“Fight for the Constructors’ title? At the moment, in both championships, thinking of winning is not realistic“. With these words, spoken to journalists immediately after the end of the race in Monza, Max Verstappen has officially opened the Red Bull crisis. Not that this was the first race in which the Milton Keynes team has struggled, considering that they have now reached six consecutive GPs without a victorybut never has the reigning champion been so explicit in highlighting how the situation in both standings is slipping out of the control of the dominant team of recent seasons.
Red Bull has just eight points over McLaren in the Constructors’ Championship, while the #1 still has 62 over Lando Norris. Thanks to Charles Leclerc’s victorywho gave a big hand to his ‘old’ rival from the karting years: “Limited damage? In a certain sense, yes. – admitted Verstappen – but that’s not how I like to look at the championship. We have to try to be the architects of our own fortunes, but today this is what we have“.
Shots at the team
Verstappen’s concern was all-round and also concerns the next races, which will be on two tracks with a diametrically opposed layout to that of Monza: Baku and Singapore. “I don’t care – the orange champion sentenced – as we are at the moment, we are doing badly everywhere. So we need a lot of changes“. Analysing the Monza race, Verstappen also highlighted big flaws on the part of the team, between technical problems and management of strategies: “For most of the race I couldn’t fully exploit the power of the engine. We had a small problem – he explained – and I think also from a strategy point of view we could have done a better job to be at least a little more competitive. It wouldn’t have changed the position, but I think we didn’t do our optimal race”.
Finally Max also explained to the media the curious team radio in which he invited – with a decidedly more ‘pungent’ language – the team to stay “I wake“: “It had to do with my battery percentage. – revealed Verstappen – because obviously there are certain levels and certain modes of use. In practice, I see that the battery fills up and at a certain point you can switch to a faster mode. So I asked and they answered me: ‘Oh yes, you can do that.’ And I: ‘Come on, it’s such an obvious thing…’. You have to be on top. I know I wasn’t competing against anyone, but that shouldn’t matter.. It is still an F1 race where you have to optimize everything”. A message that came through loud and clear in Milton Keynes.
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