No chance in the fight for pole for Max Verstappen. Sure, Silverstone had started off difficult for Red Bull on Friday anyway, but finishing qualifying in fourth place, just 0.384 seconds behind, is much worse than expected for a team that clearly wanted to be on the front row. But after a near disaster in Q1, the picture needs to be readjusted.
“It is much better than we thought!”, replied Red Bull’s motorsport advisor Dr. Helmut Marko when asked by Motorsport-Magazin.comIn Q1, Verstappen had thrown the RB20 off the track on his first fast slick attempt after a red flag in the high-speed right-hander Copse as drizzle began to set in.
Verstappen risks too much in the rain: crash in Copse
Verstappen’s rear end slipped when he turned in. “Just in the wrong place at the wrong time,” he analyzed afterwards. “We left a little late, but we weren’t expecting any more rain in Q1. When I came out of Turn 7, I saw the first rain on my visor. The people in front of me had all already gone through.”
In the cockpit, Verstappen couldn’t have known at the time that it would only be a small passing shower. He had to assume that this attempt on a 90 percent dry track would be his only chance to get slicks: “You know, the people in front of you are doing a time, the rain is coming, now you have to get a time. Otherwise you’re out anyway.”
“So I tried to get some speed into it, I took my foot off the gas, but not enough, and it was so slippery that I slipped,” says Verstappen. He avoided a spin, but only by opening the steering and driving straight ahead. Through the run-off area into the gravel bed, then out onto the access road by the tire stack. Thanks to the rain easing again, he saved himself from being eliminated in Q1 with an eleventh place, but the engineers could already see from the data that something was wrong.
Marko reveals: This is how bad Verstappen’s damage was in qualifying
Verstappen had damaged his underbody in the gravel. He was 100 points short of downforce. “With the help of the mechanics, we managed a quick repair, and adaptations, different wings and so on, so we were able to reduce it to around 20,” reveals Marko. “Fourth place is a sensation.”
Verstappen agrees: “The team was great. You could see them grinding the whole time. How they optimized everything. The underbody was in a really bad state. At first I was just happy that I made it to Q3. The car had taken a massive step back.”
Without the 20 missing downforce points, Verstappen would definitely have been up there in the fight for the front row, Marko reckons. Despite a somewhat difficult Silverstone weekend so far, Verstappen agrees: “We changed a lot of things on the car and I think it was better in qualifying, but with the damage we couldn’t really show that.”
Pole missed, victory still possible: Red Bull remains optimistic in Silverstone
For the race, Marko assumes that the underbody can be repaired again overnight. After all, it is the only example of a small update. But, he calculates, that will only bring a good half a tenth overall.
So they definitely see themselves in the fight for victory. “From P4, anything is possible,” says Verstappen. “Maybe I need to drive a more aggressive race, which can be quite fun.” With the Mercedes starting from the front row, Marko sees a rain setup that may be too aggressive, and therefore points to McLaren – with Lando Norris in P3 – as their biggest opponent: “Or us for them. We have to get past them first.”