Red Bull Crisis, Jordan Speaks Out: “Catastrophic Situation, It’s Killing Verstappen”

Red Bull, a “catastrophic” crisis

Regardless of the Ferrari victory with Charles Leclerc and the internal discussions in the McLaren garage over the now infamous “Papaya rules”, the big theme of the Italian GP in Monza is the Red Bull crisis. Max Verstappen’s sixth place and Sergio Perez’s eighth are a wake-up call for the reigning world champion team, which in just a few GPs has slipped from dominating at the start of the year to being the fourth force on the track. A collapse that the world champion commented on bluntly: “We have transformed a dominant machine into a monster”. So much so that the former team principal Eddie Jordan did not hesitate to define “catastrophic” in the podcast Formula for Successconducted together with David Coulthard.

Eddie Jordan Speaks

In short, a rather complicated moment for the Milton Keynes team, which according to the former Jordan boss is putting even a star of the calibre of Max Verstappen in great difficulty: “The situation is now catastrophic. Christian Horner has a huge job to do. We have all criticized Perez, but maybe the problem is not him but the speed of the car. What Max can do, he does precisely because he is Max. Without any doubt he is the best driver in Formula 1 at the moment and I think finishing races in fifth or sixth place is something that is killing him”.

The recipe to get back on top

“Let’s pretend to be – added the Irish manager, who has always been very close to Adrian Newey – the Red Bull bosses. What’s the first thing you do? I’d say ‘enough of the bullshit, we need to see the facts’. I’d bring all the engineers into the meeting room for a heart-to-heart about the situation. What was the set-up that worked at the start of the season? What was the setup when you were winning races by 15 seconds? What has changed? I’d ask to see the updates because it’s sure as heaven that those updates didn’t work. They are trying to rely on a wind tunnel that is giving the wrong results. I would do this and make sure that nothing is changed on the car until the engineers can categorically guarantee me that the new ones are faster. I’m sorry, but that’s my opinion.”.