Red Bull in turmoil as Max Verstappen worries they 'clearly don't understand'

29 May 2024 , 13:04

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Max Verstappen is worried about Red Bull's issues (Image: Getty Images)

Max Verstappen fears Red Bull are baffled by their newly-apparent car weaknesses after a Monaco Grand Prix weekend to forget.

Red Bull were worried about their chances on the streets of Monte Carlo and their worst fears came to pass. Not only were they not ahead of their rivals, but they were quite significantly slower than the likes of Ferrari and McLaren throughout.

Verstappen qualified down in sixth while team-mate Sergio Perez suffered an embarrassing Q1 exit. On race day, the Mexican crashed out on the first lap while his team-mate could not overtake on the tight circuit and finished where he started.

That came a week after another challenging weekend at the Emilia Romagna Grand Prix. Verstappen won in Imola but by less than a second over Lando Norris as McLaren provided more evidence that they have closed the performance gap to the defending champions.

In Monaco, the crux of their problems was how poorly their cars dealt with the kerbs. Their unique suspension designs do not tend to deal well with the car being unsettled in that way when going over those kerbs - a weakness from last year which was masked by the sheer pace advantage they had.

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But the fact it has been an issue for some time tells Verstappen that it is not a problem that is likely to be solved any time soon. "It's a fundamental problem, so it is not something that will be fixed within weeks," he told Motorsport.com.

"We need to understand what it is, because we clearly don't understand it. But we will work hard to find the problem and then try to get rid of it. I don't know if we can do it this year but hopefully for next year."

Up next is the Canadian Grand Prix at another undulating circuit which Verstappen worries will present similar problems. He said: "[Montreal] won't be our best weekend either because of the curbs and bumps. There are certainly some tracks where there will be some unexpected problems."

Speaking about the rest of the season at large, he added: "There are definitely a few tracks on the calendar that are not ideal for us. Any track that is bumpy or you have to ride a lot of kerbs, so the street circuits, will probably be a little bit tricky but hopefully by then we have a little bit of understanding of what is going on.

"There are also some races that will suit our car again more, but we know where we have to work on. There's one clear direction where I think we're still lacking quite a bit of performance. So if we can fix that, our car will be better in general on every single track."

Daniel Moxon