Red Bull’s worst performance pace-wise in years came at the Italian Grand Prix last weekend.
Max Verstappen and Sergio Pérez could only manage P7 and P8 in qualifying, and it was barely any better on Sunday as they crossed the line in P6 and P8. George Russell’s lap 1 mishap gave the Dutch driver a vital two extra points.
After narrowly missing out on beating his teammate in qualifying, Sergio Pérez finished just under 14s behind the three-time World Champion on Sunday.
The 6-time race winner already knew the race was going to be painful with how bad the car felt on the laps to the grid.
“We were not expecting it to be that bad, but already on laps to grid I could find that I just couldn’t stop the car, the way I wanted, I couldn’t play with it.”
Regarding strategy, Red Bull went for hard-hard-medium. However, Pérez’s race final stint was longer than ideal on the mediums as they looked to cover George Russell who was going quickly on a set of hards.
It didn’t pay off as the British driver eventually made a move on the Mexican, following a rather close shave on the run down to turn 1 at one point.
“I think the hard wasn’t looking too bad, but then the medium tyre was quite tricky. We compromised a little bit the strategy to try and keep George behind, who was quite a lot faster than us.
“Unfortunately, not enough and we struggled with balance today.”
In the second stint, Russell had already tried to make a move into turn 1 after his front wing change. Pérez defined into the corner and Russell took the escape road.
The Brit tried to attack again into turn 4, leaving the Mexican surprised as it could have been classified as gaining a lasting advantage with the momentum Russell had.
“Yes, I was surprised. That was a pretty clever move. He was attacking me after he let me by.”
Red Bull had gone fastest in FP1 as Verstappen topped the times. As the weekend went on, however, McLaren, Ferrari and Mercedes all proved to be quicker.
For Pérez, the weekend was tough from start to finish for the team.
“No, I think we were struggling today.
“Since FP1 has been tricky, it has been difficult. It hasn’t been a great start to the weekend, and it just went from bad to worse.”
Concerning pace, Pérez was keeping Verstappen very honest for the first two stints, running around 2 to 4s behind his teammate as he kept him within sight.
While his personal performance was pretty strong, Pérez wishes Verstappen was a long way up the road and winning to help the team in the Constructors’ Championship. They lead McLaren by just 8 points heading to Azerbaijan.
“No, I wish the gap was a lot bigger and that Max was winning, because at the end that would only help the team and the Constructors’ especially.
“We’ve got a lot of work to do to fix this issue and hopefully the next few races can be better for us.”
With extremely tough circuits to come in Baku and Singapore, Red Bull face a race against time to have a car that can give respectable performance at both those venues.
The 34-year-old explained what the problems are with the RB20 right now.
“I think it’s mainly balance. We need to be able to stop the car and be able to carry the speed.
“The problem is that we are not able to throw the car in because the rear is nowhere, so it’s something we have to work on.”
The Mexican concluded on a relatively positive note. He says the team now understands their fundamental issues as they seem them on the data, and it’s up to them to find solutions to save their season.
“I think the good thing is that we have no questions.
“Now we know exactly where the issue is and we can clearly see it on the data. It’s just how to fix it, how to attack it.
“I think the next few weeks are going to be very important. I’m already tomorrow [Monday] in the factory with the team, with the engineers, because I think next week is going to be a very important one.”
