After having the most dominant season an F1 driver has ever had, Max Verstappen is beginning to struggle with his 2024 RB20. Coincidentally the weekend that Adrian Newey announced he was stepping back from the Red Bull F1 team Max looked exposed in Imola as he failed to top the time sheets in any of the practice sessions.
Only a lucky tow from Nico Hulkenberg during his final push lap in qualifying saw Verstappen claim pole position ahead of Oscar Piastri and Lando Norris – but by tiny margins. Now this weekend in Monaco once again the RB20 even in the hands of Max looks anything but a race winner.
Verstappen a SHOCKING P11
The triple world champion didn’t make the top 10 in free practice one asnd even more surreal was the fact it was the Mercedes of Lewis Hamilton who was quickest in the principality. Sergio Perez was the predictable 0.25 seconds slower than his team mate and both drivers complained of the car bouncing.
The pace improved in practice two but Charles Leclerc was quickest with a 1:11.278 on thew soft tyre and Hamilton proved the first session was no fluke as he came within 0.188 seconds of the Monegasque’s time while again worryingly for Max he was over half a second off the pace behind Alonso who was third.
Verstappen kicked off the session on the hard tyre and was complaining for 30 minutes of bad vibrations “like a kangaroo” resulting in him struggling for visibility at some of the apexes. Perez was 0.3 seconds slower than his team mate but why are the Red Bull cars struggling so much in Monaco?
Friday had overtones of Imola for Red Bull and Max but looking at the data it is in fact much worse than last weekend as Sergio Perez was quicker than the world champion in sector 2. In fact the defending champion wasn’t in the top three in sector one as his weekend lurches from on disaster to the next.
Perez quicker than Max
Suddenly the rest of the drivers in the top five teams sensed blood in the air, openly discussing their hopes for pole and a race win as Max Verstappen battles with his bucking bronco.
Max is losing a huge amount of his time to Charles Leclerc in sector 2 which runs from turn 5 to turn 12 (Tabac). This section includes the hairpin, the tunnel and the slow Nouvelle Chicane. Max is losing 0.341 seconds to the Ferrari and even Fernando Alonso’s Aston Martin is a head by 0.188 seconds.
The world champion is even slower than his team mate in sector two, not by much – 0.008 seconds – but that is telling and underlines how much Max is finding it difficult to find lap time at his ‘home’ circuit. A quick glance at the track layout would suggests sector 2 is all about straight line speed. It begins on the approach to the hairpin and ends just before the swimming pool complex.
However, sheer pace is not what sector two is about because the car needs to rotate through the tight turns like 5 and 6 and through the man made Nouvelle Chicane. Riding the kerbs is crucial to lap time both in Mirabeau.
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RB20 rotation on the kerbs is poor
Sector 2 seems as though it prioritises a reliance on straight-line speed, thanks to the run from Portier (Turn 8) down to Tabac (Turn 12), but this is a misconception. The key part of this lap is rotation with tight corners like Turn 5 and Turn 6 and the chicane coming after there tunnel. Here it is key the driver clips the inside kerb because if they miss it opening up the exit becomes nigh on impossible.
Then it matters not how powerful your car is the driver spends the run to tabac playing catch up on the time lost in the chicane as Daniel Ricciardo demonstrated in 2016. The then Red Bull driver was behind Hamilton on track, but when Lewis missed the exit, Ricciardo was on him like a flash.
While the rest of the lap appears to be more comfortable for the reigning World Champion, its not good enough for him to even think about pole position as it stands. Max is losing 0.220 to Leclerc in Sector 1 and 0.180 to Leclerc again in the third part of the lap.
Verstappen was visibly trying hard to put a lap together, clipping the walls as he pushed to and at times a little over the limit. Yet the timing boards wold not bow to his regular demands and with the field packed together tightly, at the moment Verstappen looks unable to make pole position.
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Overnight work yet to pay off
“I don’t think I even can describe what’s going on, it’s very difficult,” said Verstappen to assembled media. “It’s not something that I didn’t expect, but it’s definitely at the higher end of the worst possible outcome of the weekend so far.
“It’s very difficult, a lot of bumps and kerbs and just camber changes as well in the track and for us that’s basically impossible to take. Every time we go over it, we lose a lot of lap-time because the car doesn’t ride well.
“That’s definitely hampering us at the moment to go faster and there’s no real clear direction or solution for the weekend to solve something like that.”
Of course back in Milton Keynes the reserve drivers and engineers will be trying to work their magic overnight and serve up to the team a setup for the car which will then bend to Verstappen’s will. Practice three will be a fascinating affair to see whether F1 is to get its fourth different winner this year in the first 8 rounds of the season.
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In a significant development for the Red Bull Racing team, Chief Engineer Paul Monaghan has signed a new long-term contract with the Milton Keynes-based outfit. The move follows the imminent departure of legendary Chief Technical Officer Adrian Newey, who has been a cornerstone of Red Bull’s success.
The announcement of Monaghan’s new contract comes at a crucial time for Red Bull Racing. With Newey’s departure, questions have been raised about the future of other key technical staff whose contracts were due to be renewed. These included technical director Pierre Wache, sporting director Jonathan Wheatley, head of performance engineering Ben Waterhouse and Monaghan himself… READ MORE
