Marko Admits Red Bull's Strategic Missteps

Helmut Marko acknowledges Red Bull’s critical errors as he commends Ferrari’s audacious victory at Monza.

Helmut Marko, the Red Bull consultant, praised Ferrari’s success at Monza with a daring yet ultimately successful strategy. The Austrian was also pleased to see McLaren F1 allowing their drivers to race, which prevented Max Verstappen from seeing Lando Norris quickly rise in the rankings.

“First of all, we are glad that Ferrari won with a bold but ultimately successful strategy,” Marko told ORF. “We are also satisfied with McLaren’s sporting attitude; it’s good for Max!”

“We saw it from the first lap, and they didn’t swap places thereafter. In other words, our underperformance wasn’t so visible. It could have been worse, but the gap is about the same as at Zandvoort.”

Marko admits that Red Bull is very worried about the gap to McLaren and Ferrari, and he hopes the team can pinpoint when they took a wrong turn: “If Lando had been leading from the start, the gap would have been 40 seconds. Now, it’s 38 seconds.”

“We know we have huge problems and that doesn’t help. We need to go back and find the point where we took a wrong turn to restore the car’s balance. Then, I hope things will improve.”

Red Bull faced multiple issues. The first was tire degradation, with the RB20s suffering graining after just 15 laps on hard tires, preventing a one-stop strategy: “We thought about it, but our degradation was far too high. We could never have done that.”

Why the Red Bull RB20 became “a monster”

Verstappen stated that the RB20 had become “a monster,” and Marko endorses his driver’s comments. He even elaborates on them and notes several problems to be addressed, starting with straight-line speed, but also balance, tire management, and random occurrences of understeer and oversteer.

“We were among the slowest in the straights. But it wouldn’t have been possible to run with even less rear wing. We need balance in the car and we must see where we took a wrong turn. We need to get back to a level where the car was still competitive.”

“In the race, we couldn’t keep up with the leaders, whether in terms of strategy or pace. We simply lacked speed and when Max pushed harder, he immediately suffered new graining.”

“Today was about limiting the damage. Max can’t use his ability to drive incredibly at the limit because the car doesn’t allow it, because it reacts too unpredictably.”

“One moment, there’s understeer, then oversteer, then the brakes are again unstable at the corner entry. We lost balance at some point with the updates and with the balance, we also lost the ability to go fast with the car.”