Max Verstappen says Red Bull throws away two weekends a season by not developing a low-drag rear wing, after qualifying fifth for the Las Vegas Grand Prix.
Red Bull has been losing time to its rivals on the straights in Las Vegas, having admitted that the rear wing it has at its disposal is not well suited to the high-speed circuit. Verstappen qualified fifth but was nearly half a second off George Russell, and he says the rear wing approach is proving too costly for his liking.
“No, we opted to not make one,” Verstappen said. “We don’t have one. So this is already (the case) from 2022. I think we just never thought that we would run it that low (downforce). And then with the budget cap, you choose your priorities and we shifted that.
“Would I have liked to have a lower wing, a lower-downforce wing? Yeah, for sure, or at least a different shape, more efficient shape. It’s something that we’ll look at. But on the other hand, there’s only one more year left with these rules and I don’t know if it makes sense.
“But for me at least, it feels a bit like we throw away two race weekends like this. We should definitely lose too much on the straights.”
The championship leader says it’s not just the straight-line deficit that is costing Red Bull, however, as he didn’t feel it was gaining on its rivals through the corners either.
“In the corners and on the straights (time is being lost). We know that with our wing you lose top speed, especially with the DRS open. It’s a bit of a handicap, we knew that,” he said. “That’s something we have to deal with on a track like this, a track like Monza.
“Besides that, I always felt like the tires were a bit of a struggle for us to get them in the right operating window. I do think that we did the best we could in qualifying with what we had, and then P5 is the result.
“We got a bit lucky of course with Lewis [Hamilton] not putting a lap in, otherwise it would have been P6. I think we really maximized what we could.”
Verstappen believes he will be able to get ahead of Pierre Gasly on Saturday night but fears the other three cars starting ahead of him will be out of reach. With the ability to win a fourth drivers’ championship on Saturday, Verstappen says the big question mark is the form of McLaren.
“Hopefully of course I can fight with an Alpine. I don’t think at the moment I can fight with Ferrari or Mercedes, they’re being too quick,” he said. “And of course Lewis [Hamilton] is starting P10, so he will move forward.
“With McLaren, I don’t know. Both of us were struggling a bit in the long run. But they made some changes, we made some changes, so we have to wait and see how that will go.”
While Verstappen felt he at least maximized his qualifying result, teammate Sergio Perez dropped out in Q1 and says his struggles with the car distract him from focusing on maximizing his own performance.
“I think we’ve got a fundamental issue at the moment with the car that is just not working for me,” Perez said. “It’s where the whole brain is going, to try and fix it up instead of being compromising, and at the moment, we come to the weekends and we just explore a lot of things, and it’s just difficult to make it work.
“It’s obviously not ideal. You want to be up there, especially as I know what I can do. But when you don’t have that grip underneath you, then it’s really hard, and you’re prone to a lot of mistakes and so on.”
