When the lights went out to signal the start of the 2024 F1 Dutch Grand Prix, it looked as though Max Verstappen might drive his way to a fourth consecutive victory at his home circuit of Zandvoort.
Verstappen had lined up next to Lando Norris on the front row of the grid, and immediately beat the McLaren driver off the line. However, that winning outlook changed as Norris chased Verstappen down and overtook him on Lap 18 of 72.
Not long after that overtake, the race started to slip away. “I can’t go faster,” Verstappen said over the radio in Lap 24. “The car doesn’t respond to my inputs.”
As Verstappen battled mid-stint grip and balance issues, Norris pulled further and further ahead. He ended up seeing the chequered flag 22.896s before Verstappen, logging the largest margin between P1 and P2 in the 2024 season thus far. The Brit even logged the fastest lap on the final tour to rub things in.
It was not the result that Red Bull and Verstappen would have hoped for in his home race and 200th career Grand Prix start.
“You always hope to do better. We had a good start and tried everything we could but it was clear we were not quick enough, so I tried to be second.”
Verstappen knew going into the race that he would have a good chance at a Lap 1 lead. Norris has historically struggled to convert pole positions into race leads, and Verstappen is known as one of the best starters on the grid.
“I know that we have good starts, so I was quite confident that we would have another one, and luckily it was like that. Then I just tried to do my own race.”
Despite confidence in the start, Verstappen was unsurprised that his RB20 car quickly showed a lack of pace due to balance and grip issues. He had been experiencing similar issues in Free Practices and Qualifying, as well as in the last few race weekends before the summer break where McLaren and Mercedes has held a clear advantage at most tracks.
“The whole weekend has been the same. I had pretty much the same balance from FP1 all the way to the race. The limitations are the same, so it’s very hard to solve at the moment.
“It just seems like we are too slow but also quite bad on deg(redation) at the moment, so that’s a bit weird because I think the last few years normally we’ve been quite good on that.
“So something has been going wrong lately with the car that we need to understand and we need to of course quickly try to improve.”
He expressed that something has changed in the car in the last few months, because the issues he is currently experiencing were not present at the start of the season. He won four of the first five races as his title defence looked to be a cakewalk at that stage.
“It wasn’t there the first few races. But something in the car has made it more difficult to drive, and it’s very hard to pinpoint where that is coming from at the moment.”
As Red Bull’s RB20 has begun to struggle, McLaren’s MCL38 has begun to soar. With the Woking-based team being second in the World Constructors Championship behind the Milton Keynes squas, and the gap between them beginning to narrow, there is some alarm growing in the Red Bull garage.
Verstappen is willing to admit that their performance has been lacking in recent races, but he is adamant about fixing the issues rather than panicking about them.
“The last few races already haven’t really been fantastic. So, that in a sense was already a bit alarming. But, we know that we don’t need to panic. We know that we are just trying to improve the situation, and that’s what we are working on. F1 is very complicated.”
While he’s still leading Lando Norris in the World Drivers’ Championship by a healthy 70 points, this is Verstappen’s longest streak without a win since 2020. This doesn’t seem to be bothering him much, and he remains focused on the races ahead.
“That happens, right? I mean, I’ve had a lot of good years. Some people have never won a race in their careers, so you can also look at it like that, from my side.
“Yeah, at the moment we don’t have the fastest car, we have some issues that we have to solve, and we are working on that. And that’s the only thing I can say about that. We are very focused on it.
“There’s still a lot of races left, a lot of different kinds of tracks, this weekend was just not our best weekend.”
Looking ahead to next weekend in Monza, Verstappen and the Red Bull team know where their focus needs to be.
“We just need to figure out our balance issues. I think that will already help a lot, also with deg.
“But, we know that we have quite a bit of work to do.”
Verstappen will work to defend his lead in the World Drivers’ Championship, and Red Bull will do the same with their lead in the World Constructors’ Championship. As McLaren seems to grow faster and faster each weekend, with 9 races still remaining, both championship fights could come down to the wire.
