Max Verstappen that the Red Bull team has been “found out” as an increasingly strong threat from Ferrari and McLaren has highlighted the weaknesses of the RB20.
Verstappen said that the car felt like it was running without suspension and acting like a go-kart on Monaco’s bumps and kerbs.
He struggled throughout qualifying and could not better P6, having touched the wall on his final run. His team mate Sergio Perez failed to get out of Q1 and was left stranded in 18th place.
Verstappen admitted that it has been a difficult day, with changes failing to improve the situation.
“We tried a lot of things on the car,” he said. “Literally, nothing made it better. So then you’re just stuck. There’s not much you can do. We really tried to optimise it.
“You can see it in the second sector, we are so bad, just because I can’t touch any kerbs, because it just upsets the car way too much. You just lose a lot of lap time. And it’s just incredibly difficult.
“We went softer, stiffer, everything. But the car is like a go-kart, it’s like I’m running without suspension.
“So it’s just jumping around a lot. Not absorbing any kerb strikes or bumps or camber changes. The last corner, I think the amount of times that I just jumped almost into the wall, just pretty incredible.
“It’s also not something new. I mean, we have had this problem since 2022. Of course, for the last two years, I think we had a car advantage, so then it gets it gets masked a little bit, because we gain into corners where the kerbs and the bumps are not that much of a limitation.
“But with everyone catching up naturally, when you are not improving your weakest point you get found out. That’s what happened this weekend.”
Verstappen admitted that life has become tougher for Red Bull as rival teams have caught up and pushed the world champions harder.
“It’s been different problems,” he said. “Probably in Miami we didn’t get the balance correct. And maybe also with the tyres.
“At Imola I think we managed to turn it around quite well. But because of all the problems, we were probably not on top of the hard tyre.
“But overall, the performance was quite okay. But I knew that this was going to be one of our most difficult weekends, and for sure it showed that as well with naturally everyone catching up as well.
“I’m just aware we are not perfect, and we need to work, we need to really understand our limitations more, and try to work on that.”
Verstappen indicated that the issues seen in Monaco will not be addressed in the short-term: “It’s a fundamental problem. So it’s not something that will be fixed within weeks.
“Already the last two or three races, of course, it has been incredibly difficult. But yeah, this is worst case scenario, I would say, this this kind of track.”
Verstappen said that the car felt Ok at some points around the lap.
“I felt quite comfortable in terms of, let’s say, medium-to-high speed, the car is quite quick, but everywhere where there are bumps, it was just jumping around a lot.
“So I’m just driving around that, and trying to optimise everything, but everything was just really difficult to control. So I was surprised for most of qualifying that we were actually that close.
“I guess some didn’t nail the lap yet or whatever. But it’s always if, if, if. You can always do better. I’m not disappointed with my laps, or trying to even improve more, because just look at where we are, we are P18 and P6. Normally Checo is always very good around a street circuit and he really comes alive there.
“I think that already says enough that he is in that position. So I cannot be disappointed with P6 in that sense.”
Asked about the title battle he said: “I don’t even think about that. You know, it’s so long. So many things that can happen and one bad race won’t define the championship. But I know that to win a title, you need to be consistent, and that’s what we have to try and be.”
Adam Cooper F1 