The days when the question ‘Who will win this weekend?’ could be answered without a doubt with ‘Red Bull’ are over. Formula 1 can once again look forward to a battle for the top spot. Who is not happy about this: Max Verstappen, of course.
“The question now is no longer ‘How close can Mercedes and McLaren get to Red Bull?’, but ‘How close can we be to the competition?'” said Verstappen on Thursday in Budapest. “In the last two races we didn’t have the fastest cars, so I don’t expect that to suddenly be different now.”
But Red Bull is planning to fight back. An upgrade is planned for the Hungarian Grand Prix in the bag. “Hopefully that will give us a boost,” says the Dutchman. “We have made upgrades before, but they were not that big. The upgrade in Hungary is the biggest so far.”
More power needed! Red Bull upgrade must work
The race at the Hungaroring will be a decisive one for the Bulls. Whether the new parts work or not will have a significant impact on the rest of the team’s season. “It’s an important weekend,” confirms Verstappen. “If we don’t get good lap times here, then I don’t know how the rest of the season will turn out. At the same time, I don’t know what the other teams will do. We’re just concentrating on ourselves, we’re putting a lot of work into the car and of course I hope that this will buy us a bit of time.”
The reigning world champion hopes for one thing above all from the upgrade: performance. “We need to improve how we set up the car, but we also simply need more power, because of course a car with better performance is also easier to drive because you don’t have to push it to the limit every time,” explains Verstappen.
Max Verstappen sees need to catch up: Competition has made greater progress
At the beginning of the season, the RB20 was much easier to drive. A feeling that the Red Bull driver misses. “At the beginning of the year, I actually felt really comfortable with the car,” recalls Verstappen. “Probably even better than the year before. But after a few races, it was difficult to find the sweet spot and we had a few rough weekends. At the same time, the competition caught up.”
The development of the season and the exciting battles for the top of F1 clearly show that Red Bull has lost its dominance. “Other teams have made bigger steps,” the Dutchman sums up soberly. “That’s quite clear. When you are the leading team and have done very well in the past, it is quite normal to take smaller steps.”
Now it’s Red Bull’s turn to restore the old order and eliminate the chances of other racing teams winning. “I know that my team is pushing as hard as possible to achieve better performance,” assures Verstappen. “Now it’s up to us.”