Max Verstappen and Christian Horner thrown into alarming Red Bull F1 crisis

Max Verstappen and Christian Horner — Photo: © IMAGO

Red Bull

Verstappen and Horner thrown into ALARMING Red Bull crisis

The Dutchman's desperate driving wasn't Red Bull's biggest problem in Mexico

Daniel Austin

Monday 28 October 2024 12:57 Updated: 18:11

Max Verstappen’s Mexican Grand Prix weekend was defined by a peculiar dichotomy between bloody-minded bullishness and uncharacteristic acquiescence.

Having been repassed by eventual race winner Carlos Sainz, whom he had overtaken off the line at the run down to Turn 1, the triple world champion found himself tussling with title rival Lando Norris in the early stages.

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What ensued was an outrageous period of driving from Dutchman, who pushed far beyond the limits of acceptable on-track conduct, desperately shoving the Brit off the track at both Turn 4 and Turn 8 and copping a whopping 20-seconds’ worth of penalties in the process.

The judgement was justified, as evidenced by the morose fashion in which news of its implementation was delivered by race engineer Gianpiero Lambiase over the radio, and the lack of argument Verstappen himself put up in the aftermath.

At times belligerent to the point of childishness on the radio, Verstappen clearly knew he had gone way too far and compromised his own race.

Quite why he did not merely accept that Norris was going to pass him, given he could potentially have re-challenged the McLaren man on the next lap and would likely have finished at worst fourth even if Norris managed to break away, is incomprehensible.

This was desperation to a damaging degree, and the advantage in the race for the constructors’ championship has now been cut by 10 points to 47.

But Verstappen and his Red Bull team have a far more alarming issue to deal with than penalties dished out by the stewards now.

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Why were Verstappen and Red Bull so far off in Mexico?

The Red Bull was not as fast as the McLaren in Mexico despite the early battle

By the time the chequered flag fell, Verstappen was just under a full minute behind race winner Sainz. Though the Red Bull was able to challenge for pole position on Saturday, its long run pace on Sunday was nowhere near the required level to compete with either the Ferraris or the McLarens over the full distance.

Having closed the gap to the two faster teams in Azerbaijan, Singapore and the United States, this seemed to be a significant step backwards for the Milton Keynes-based squad.

Indeed, they have now fallen to third in the constructors’ championship behind Ferrari. Verstappen even made clear that he feels his poor driving in the early stages at the Autodromo Hermanos Rodriguez was partly caused by the car’s issues.

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"The problem is that of course when you're slower you're being put in those positions and I'm not going to give up easily," Verstappen said.

"At the end of the day it's not about agreeing or disagreeing with the penalty, the only thing is 20 seconds is quite a lot. But the biggest problem of the day is the race pace which was really not good. [Even] without those penalties we had no chance to fight up front.

"This was a really bad day for us, but I also know we can do a lot better than this. So we just keep going at it. Austin was promising but here we were really off. I hope in Brazil again we can be more competitive."

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Can Red Bull turn things around soon?

Christian Horner faces a big challenge in the next few weeks

Horner, whose team will lose a slew of key technical staff including chief designed Adrian Newey and sporting director Jonathan Wheatley in the next few months, concurred that Red Bull have significant performance problems which they need to rectify.

"You've always got to play to the rules and we'll look and learn from this race,” Horner said. “I think more importantly for us to understand today [is why] we just didn't have the pace. We had good pace in quali yesterday, but our race pace was nowhere compared to the Ferrari and McLaren. So that's where our focus will be over the next five days.

"Of course we've got to keep pushing and understand what the swing in performance in the race was. It seems at the moment the tyres are so crucial, if you're not in the right operating window you're nowhere."

The Red Bull did indeed seem to chew through its rubber faster than both the Ferraris and McLarens, with which it was able to keep pace in the opening laps of its two stints before gradually fading further and further away.

Norris must still make up an average of 12 points in each of the final four grand prix weekends to win the title, an enormous challenge, but if Red Bull are unable to find a way to lighten the load on their tyres then they will the door ajar for Norris and his team.

Verstappen can help himself significantly in the final stages of this battle by recognising that being overtaken by Norris isn’t the end of the world, and doesn’t necessitate the kind of reckless response he delivered in Mexico City.

But more crucial even than whether Verstappen can settle on a suitable middle ground in wheel-to-wheel duels is whether Red Bull are able to claw back a deficit which looks as potentially dangerous as some of their star man’s recent driving.

Max Verstappen Ferrari FIA Lando Norris Carlos Sainz Mexican Grand Prix