Red Bull Struggles at Monza; Verstappen, Perez Lag

Monza reveals the RB20’s balance issues as Verstappen and Perez face setbacks, Horner comments.

The qualifying round at Monza proved exceedingly challenging for the Red Bull Racing drivers.

Max Verstappen, placing only seventh, was nearly seven-tenths off the pole position secured by Lando Norris.

“The car is extremely difficult to drive, and I can’t seem to find a good balance. If you resolve one issue, another pops up,” Verstappen explained.

“It’s not always easy to handle, to put it mildly. The Q2 wasn’t too bad. Q3 was still very poor—I experienced a lot of understeer on both sets of tyres.”

“I lost a lot of time per lap; I couldn’t really push the tyres, so I struggled with that for reasons I can’t fathom.”

“The long stints didn’t look very promising. When the balance is off, everything becomes challenging in the race.”

“The last few races haven’t been great, so we need to turn things around and get competitive as quickly as possible. Tomorrow, we’ll have to limit the damage.”

Sergio Perez qualified just behind his teammate, in eighth place.

“I think what we need to fix is related to the overall balance. And with these levels of downforce, it’s even worse. I had a good run on my worn tyre, but as soon as I switched to new tyres, the car became tricky; it was difficult.”

“It’s going to be a long race, especially starting from where we are. But at least the pace on long runs seems better, and if we can put everything together, we should be able to make progress.”

Thus, this qualifying session confirms that the RB20 needs significant improvements to bring smiles back to its drivers, as noted by Christian Horner this evening.

“We were severely bitten by reality today. The balance is not there, as you can hear from Max’s comments. There is something fundamental that we are not getting right. The Q2 went not too badly, but in Q3, we were miles off.”

“We are examining everything. We used older specifications last week to see if that would solve the issues, but the reality is that we still had the same handling characteristics and problems.”

“We need to resolve this issue quickly because McLaren has made significant strides in recent races, and we are now also trailing behind Ferrari and Mercedes.”

“It’s clear that something is not working with the car. There will be a technical solution to a technical problem.”