28/08/2024
NEWS STORY
As McLaren closes to within 30 points in the constructor standings, Max Verstappen insists that there is no need to panic.
The Austrian team's worst fears were realised on Sunday when Lando Norris retook the lead just 18 laps into the race and disappeared into the distance, finishing the afternoon 22 seconds up the road ahead of Max Verstappen, beaten at his home race for the first time since the Netherlands returned to the schedule.
It was a commanding victory, and one that suggests that both titles are at risk, as Verstappen clearly appreciates, the Dutchman believing that rather than McLaren making a vast improvement in the wake of its Miami upgrades, Red Bull has gone the wrong way since Monaco.
"It wasn't there in the first few races, but something in the car has made it more difficult to drive," said the three-time world champion on Sunday. "It's very hard to pinpoint where that is coming from at the moment. And that is then hurting, of course, our one-lap performance, but also our long-run.
"The whole weekend has been the same limitations," he added. "I had pretty much the same balance from FP1 all the way to the race, so it's just very hard to solve at the moment. It just seems like we are too slow, but also quite bad on degradation at the moment. That's a bit weird because I think the last few years normally we've been quite good on that.
"So, something has been going wrong lately with the car that we need to understand and we need to quickly try to improve. It's just not a connected balance, front or rear."
"This weekend was just a bad weekend in general," said the Dutch youngster. "So we need to understand that. But the last few races already, they haven't really been fantastic. So that, in a sense, was already a bit alarming.
"But we know that we don't need to panic," he insisted. "We are trying to improve the situation. And that's what we are working on. But F1 is very complicated."
With the gap in the Constructors' Championship down to 30 points there are genuine fears that the title that decides the prize money could be lost.
"Based on performance, if it was like that at the next nine races, yes, it would be very, very difficult," admits Horner. "But it's the fourth time this year, only the fourth time, that Max's points lead had reduced. It's only Lando's second win.
"We know we have to find performance," he added. "We were 78 points, now we're 70 ahead. We want to make sure that we extend the lead, not see it continuously diminish.
"Obviously they made a step a little while ago and their car here particularly with Lando was very impressive. So, we need to understand where and address our deficit.
"It shows that things have moved very quickly. I mean, we were winning races by 20, 25 seconds and Stefano was asking us to slow down in the first five races. It can change very quickly and that means it can change back the other way as well.
"We know we've got an issue. You can hear that Max didn't feel that the car was responding to what he wanted. We've obviously got to be able to manifest that into a setup that works these tyres across all conditions.
"McLaren did that with Lando. We weren't able to, but we limited the damage by 'if you can't win it, finish second'."