For 50 laps it looked as if Max Verstappen had everything under control in the race at Imola. He didn’t dominate, but right from the start he opened up a small lead over Lando Norris’ McLaren. For a long time it ranged between six and seven seconds. But suddenly it got out of control. And the victory was almost lost.
“This was not a race for the faint of heart!” says Red Bull’s motorsport consultant Dr. Helmut Marko then on ServusTV. For the viewer, the extent of Verstappen’s problems only really became apparent in the last 10 laps. But on the pit wall you could already see a gradually deteriorating situation. The hard tire comes into focus.
“I originally opened up the gap on the medium, so we were strong,” says Verstappen. “I think we were faster than McLaren and Ferrari.” Not so after the only pit stop and the switch to Hard. Marko provides the first details: “The first two or three laps were okay. Then the temperature dropped.” Verstappen simply couldn’t keep the Hard in the optimal working window.
Marko praises: Verstappen’s skills make victory clear at the tire limit
A tire outside the temperature window – that means less grip, more slipping, and ultimately more wear. And due to the of After the early stops set off by McLaren before lap 30, Verstappen still had a long way to victory ahead of him. The last 10 laps were a horror show: “It was like being on ice. You can feel when the tires no longer build up grip. In turn 7 I’m almost into the stands.”
“I had to drive really strange lines,” describes Verstappen. “The last 10 laps I was just trying to survive and then Lando picked up the pace.” The Norris-McLaren, which was blessed with significantly better tire behavior, became increasingly larger in the rearview mirror. And Red Bull was close to collapsing completely.
Worse still: On the medium, the RB20 was good, but a little too understeering, and Verstappen had exceeded the track limits three times. The next violation would trigger a time penalty. But Verstappen stayed cool: “I just tried to go at my pace. You can’t force half a second if you don’t have the balance. I just tried not to make any mistakes and drive around the balance.”
“Max was incredible, drove an absolutely flawless race,” said Marko enthusiastically under the circumstances. “Lando was significantly faster. Thank God he had three or four wobbles that prevented him from getting into the DRS.” It wasn’t until the beginning of the last lap that Norris reduced the gap to less than a second. Too late. 0.725 of them remained for Verstappen until the finish line, and victory was assured.
Red Bull alerts: Hard problem has existed for several races
Red Bull is now beginning to investigate the causes. Marko suspects the causes are a mixed setup process. Verstappen and the team needed all three training sessions to make a stubborn RB20 drivable for the drivers. The setup was changed again between FP3 and qualifying.
There was no experience with full tanks in racing trim. “What we did for qualifying to heat up the tires better, I don’t think was optimal for the hard,” Marko concludes. A warning shot for the World Championship leaders: “It’s not a uniform trend, but there have been two or three races where we didn’t cope so well with the hard tires and where the tire wear increased even further due to low temperatures.”
Verstappen also demands: “We have to analyze what went wrong. McLaren was simply faster on hard, and I think Ferrari was too.” Unsurprisingly, Norris is frustrated at having so narrowly missed out on his second win in a row. More from the McLaren driver can be found here: