Christian Horner has reflected on Max Verstappen’s disappointing performance during the 2024 F1 Italian GP qualifying session. Verstappen managed to qualify at P7, reporting issues with the car throughout the session.
Red Bull’s struggles persisted at Monza, as the team faced a challenging qualifying session. While Lando Norris secured pole position, Verstappen’s qualifying time was nearly 0.7 seconds slower, relegating him to P7 on the starting grid. His teammate, Sergio Perez, will start alongside him in P8.
Although the RB20 initially demonstrated strong performance this season, the team has been outpaced by the rapid development of their competitors. This has significantly eroded the dominance Red Bull established in previous seasons. Following Verstappen’s qualifying struggles at Monza, team principal Christian Horner attributed the issues to balance problems with the car.
“The balance just isn’t there, you can hear from Max’s comments,” Sky quoted him as saying. Something is there fundamentally happening that we are not on top of. Q2 didn’t look too bad but in Q3 we were miles away.””We are looking at everything. We ran older spec last week to see if that redressed the issues but the reality was we still had the same handling characteristics and issues,” the 50-year-old added.
With both Red Bull drivers qualifying behind three teams on the grid, Horner believes that immediate action is necessary to address the car’s performance issues.
“We need to address it quickly as McLaren have made a significant step over the last few races and we are now behind Ferrari and Mercedes as well. Something is clearly not working on the car. There will be an engineering solution to an engineering problem,” he said.
Max Verstappen points out issues with the RB20 amidst difficult period at Monza: “The car is very difficult to drive”
Speaking to the media after the qualifying session, Verstappen highlighted the car’s balance issues that contributed to his struggles. He mentioned that the understeer made it challenging to improve his lap times, echoing the concerns expressed by Horner.
“The car is very difficult to drive and find a good balance,” Verstappen said. “If you have one issue and try to fix that, then there is another issue. It’s not very driveable, let’s put it like that. Q2 was not too bad Q3 felt very bad again – I had a lot of understeer on both tyres.”
“I lost a lot of lap time, I couldn’t really push the tyres, so struggling a lot with that for a reason I can’t understand,” he added.The 26-year-old is currently dominating the drivers’ World Championship, holding a significant lead. However, if his current level of performance continues, he may face increasing pressure from Lando Norris, who is gradually closing the gap. Meanwhile, McLaren has made significant strides in the Constructors’ Championship and is now within striking distance of Red Bull.
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