Sep.2 (GMM) Gerhard Berger, a long-time friend and ally of the Red Bull brand, thinks the unrest surrounding the top F1 team this year has clearly “left its mark”.
Championship leader Max Verstappen could manage no better than P6 in Sunday’s Italian GP – having qualified P7.
And as the 2024 car’s performance continues to progressively slide, the triple world champion’s rhetoric is progressively becoming more alarmed.
“If we don’t change anything on the car, it’s going to be all bad from now until the end of the season,” said the Dutch driver.
Verstappen, 26, says the problem is deeper than just poor handling and pace.
“I didn’t like the strategy at all and the pitstop was really crap,” he bluntly told Viaplay after the race at Monza. “We also had to drive with less power for most of the race because we had a problem.
“Yes, actually nothing went well in the race. The whole weekend, actually,” Verstappen added.
He was particularly scathing of what he regarded as inattention by his engineers. “My battery was pretty much empty when I was fighting with Lando (Norris),” said Verstappen.
“Then I had to go to a certain setting, and at some point I asked ‘Can I go back?’ They said ‘Oh yes, go back’. Then I think ‘what’s that? You have all the data all the time, right? I shouldn’t have to ask them.
“We were in no man’s land, but we have to stay on top of things. Otherwise I’d better just stay home,” Verstappen insisted. “There are a lot of things that need to be said,” he added, when asked if he will be taking up his issues with team management.
And when asked how many more races he thinks he can win in 2024, the championship leader – whose gap to McLaren’s Norris shrank from 70 to 62 points on Sunday – answered: “As it is now, not a single one.”
Verstappen has played down the impact of the leadership turmoil at Red Bull this year and the departure of Adrian Newey, but he admits he is totally baffled.
“Last year we had the most dominant car ever, and we’ve basically turned it into a monster. A very dominant car becomes an undriveable car in – what – six or eight months? That’s very strange to me,” he said.
“In the current situation, we are going to go badly everywhere. At the moment, both championships are unrealistic.”
The bright side for Verstappen is that his lead would have narrowed even more at Monza if Oscar Piastri in the sister car had been ordered against passing Norris on lap 1.
“In a way, this helps in terms of damage limitation,” Verstappen said, “but that is not how I want to look at the championship.
“I’ve said a lot about the problems now – now it’s up to the team to come up with a lot of changes to the car. We have to turn the whole car inside out.”
F1 legend Berger, who was the first ever Red Bull-backed athlete and once a co-owner of the Faenza based junior team, reluctantly admits that the off-track turmoil at Red Bull Racing this year has probably had an impact.
“Max is still a special figure in this business,” the 65-year-old Austrian was quoted as saying by Kronen Zeitung at Monza. “He usually makes the difference. But even he can’t do much at the moment.
“It has to be said quite clearly that all this bickering in the team over the last six months has obviously left its mark. The fire alarms must be going off now,” Berger concluded.