With the top-speed sensitive nature of the track, Red Bull was supposed to do much better at Monza than a track like Zandvoort which required high downforce on the car. However, the Italian Grand Prix turned out to be a disaster for the Austrian outfit and team principal Christian Horner has explained why it was such a bad weekend for them.
Having qualified in P7 and P8 on Saturday, both drivers were already set for a tough race on Sunday. However, neither of them was able to make any meaningful progress throughout the race as Max Verstappen only made up one position to finish P6, almost 40 seconds behind the race winner.
Blunt words from Max Verstappen following his P6 finish in the Italian GP…
…are Red Bull powerless to stop both 2024 F1 titles slipping between their fingers? pic.twitter.com/MpcnIaWOu3
— Autosport (@autosport) September 1, 2024
The Dutchman was understandably frustrated and later said that if this continues there would be no more wins for Red Bull this season. And while the balance issues of the RB20 have been well-documented, Horner explained that it affected the car a lot more in Monza.
Per RacingNews365, Horner explained, “Running more downforce perhaps hides some of the balance issues that we have.”
“You can see that we’ve got a disconnection in balance that just isn’t working, and then as soon as you end up in that situation, you’re harder on tires, you end up compensating, you move the balance around, and to cure one problem, you create another. So you just end up in a vicious circle.”, he added.
While the RB20 can run effectively when it is under stable downforce loads in mid and high-speed corners, Monza is all about having minimum downforce while still running low to the ground.
And Red Bull has not been able to work the tires properly in those conditions, something they’ve historically been very good at. That is why, despite having two new sets of soft tires in Q3, Verstappen was seven-tenths slower than McLaren.
Naturally, the Dutchman feels frustrated with his performance being compromised due to the car’s inadequacies. While he wasn’t having angry rants like Hungary, Verstappen was still downbeat during the Italian GP.
Verstappen is frustrated with Red Bull’s lack of attentiveness in the race
At one point during the Italian Grand Prix, Verstappen effectively asked over the team radio for people to wake up in the background, which was a somewhat cryptic message for most people.
Later on, during the post-race interviews, he explained that the team asked him to go to a slower setting once he had drained the batteries while fighting with Lando Norris. However, the team didn’t let him know when he could go back to the normal settings and this left Verstappen fuming.
“[The Team] can exactly see when I can make those steps. I shouldn’t have to ask when I can go back. We might be in nobody’s land, but you still have to be on top of things. Otherwise, I can just stay home”, Verstappen remarked.
The three-time champion also mentioned that Red Bull may not be able to win any races, if they cannot overturn their car performance soon. This was a very grim prediction with Verstappen not confident about putting up a strong defense to retain his championship.
