Max Verstappen had one of the worst weekends of the 2024 season in Monza, finishing almost 40 seconds behind race winner Charles Leclerc in P6. After the race, the Dutchman didn’t shy away from expressing his disappointment with Red Bull and urged the team to revise the whole concept of the RB20 to save his championship hopes.
However, according to former Haas team principal Guenther Steiner, this is an unreasonable ask from Verstappen and Red Bull won’t be able to deliver on it for the rest of the 2024 season.
Steiner gave several reasons why it is almost impossible for the Austrian outfit to change the concept mid-season. The biggest reason is that there is not enough time left in the season to work on a new concept and deliver on it before it’s already too late. And even if they tried it, there is a risk that a concept that is hurried might be even worse than what they currently have.
Another big reason is the financial limitations because of the budget cap in F1. Red Bull just might not have enough resources to work on a new car concept. Speaking on the situation on ‘The Red Flags Podcast’, the Italian explained, “It’s too late, I mean until you develop it and produce it, you’re after Abu Dhabi there’ll be no point.”
“The thing they have to decide now is like do we do something big for this year still and do we have money under the budget cap still to do something? Maybe it doesn’t work again like a few packages they had… because that will take money as well.”
According to Steiner, the best Red Bull can do now is to try and eke out the performance of the RB20 with a few upgrade packages, however, they might have hit a ceiling when it comes to maximizing the current ground-effect regulations. Regardless, it is not helping Verstappen as the Dutchman has become increasingly frustrated in the past few races.
Verstappen reckons the RB20 has become undrivable
Verstappen is one of the few drivers on the grid who likes to drive a car that has a pointy front end meaning a lot of oversteer. However, in recent races, he has been complaining about the car not turning at all in the medium and slow-speed corners, meaning it has a lot of understeer.
He also famously said over the team radio in Hungary that he was on negative five brake bias but the car was still not turning indicating that even changing the brake bias did not give him adequate balance between the front and the rear end of the car.
However, these problems could supposedly be down to not being able to use the asymmetric braking system, something that Peter Windsor highlighted via his tweet that Red Bull was rumoredly using until the Miami Grand Prix.
He explained how this braking system could provide an advantage by allowing different brake pressures to be applied to the left and right tires, particularly during cornering. However, the FIA amended the technical regulations after the Belgian Grand Prix to explicitly forbid such a system.
