16/09/2024
NEWS STORY
Insisting "you win or lose as a team", Max Verstappen puts poor race performance down to changes made for qualifying.
Speaking on Saturday after qualifying sixth, despite the Red Bull having looked strong in the preceding three practice sessions, clearly benefitting from the new floor introduced this weekend, the three-time world champion admitted to having made changes to his car which compromised its performance.
Unfortunately the changes continued to affect the car in the race, the Dutchman complaining that his car "was jumping around a lot in all the low-speed corners", its wheels "literally coming off the ground".
Unable to benefit from Lando Norris' qualifying error, in the final moments of the race the Dutchman lost out to the McLaren driver when he made a late pit stop for softs in a fruitless bid to claim fastest lap.
"I think the changes we did to the car were positive," he said of the upgrades, "but then you still need to do the set-up on the car.
"I think we were heading in the right direction," he continued, "but then the changes that we made before qualifying tipped it over the edge. We paid the price for that in the race.
"You lose contact patch with the tarmac which you don't want, that then caused me to slide a lot more, overheat the tyres more and there was no way to drive around it so the pace was just a bit all over the place," he admitted.
"I had to box and then it was just a bit unfortunate I got stuck behind Alex and Lando," he added. "I was in that fight, George passed me. We actually had good pace, the two of us were catching the leaders.
"But as soon as I got close to George again within that window where you have the dirty air, because of the jumping that I'm dealing with I'm sliding already quite a bit. When I got close to him I'm sliding even more, and that just tipped it over the edge where it becomes quite uncontrollable towards the end of the race, which was very difficult again."
Red Bull's ultimately miserable Baku weekend was compounded by his teammate's failure to finish following his late clash with Carlos Sainz as they battled for second. As a result, McLaren claimed the lead in the constructors' title fight.
"Today ended up being a worst case scenario," admitted Verstappen, "but the most important thing is that Checo is okay.
"For the championship, we are going to work together as a team, the fight is not over. You win or lose as a team and we won't give up. It is as simple as that.
Check out our Sunday gallery from Baku here.