After a poor qualifying performance that left him down in seventh place on the grid for the 2024 Italian GP, Max Verstappen has played down his chances of a fightback to win in Monza for a third consecutive year, making a blunt assessment that Red Bull is just “too slow” to fight for victory on Sunday.
Although the Dutchman had set – if not world-beating – decent laps in Q1 and Q2, things fell apart for the three-time world champion in the final segment of qualifying, as he struggled with chronic “understeer” that appeared whilst running new sets of the soft compound tyres – and was left puzzled as to why the car worked in a more benign way with used tyres.
He also pointed out how there was a distinct drop in pace compared to Q2, as he went nearly four tenths slower than his best time of the weekend, despite the natural evolution of the track conditions and the usual gains that should happen from fitting a brand-new set of tyres:
“For whatever reason, in Q3 I picked up a lot of understeer on both tyre sets,” Verstappen explained. “This is something that I don’t understand at the moment. I mean, it was just not drivable anymore.
“I couldn’t attack any corner. Yeah, so that’s something that is very weird. I mean, going four tenths slower than what you did in Q2 is not normal.”
And whilst his lap wasn’t the cleanest as he dipped a wheel in the gravel and was perhaps distracted a bit by an off for his team-mate Sergio Perez – who was running just ahead and went wide at the second Lesmo corner – Verstappen was quick to dismiss that as the sole reason of his lowly grid position, pointing out he already had trouble in his traffic-free lap in the first run:
“I already had the same problem on the lap before, [and] on the other [new] tyre sets. It was just not working for whatever reason.
“The only explanation [I can give] is that it felt better on a scrubbed tyre for me than on a new.
“But, yeah, still, I mean, the balance difference that I had in Q3 was very weird. Never experienced something like that before.
“It’s just weird that it suddenly happened. Because Q1, Q2, it was not like that. But on the other hand, our car is extremely tricky to drive from entry to mid-corner. There’s a massive balance shift at the moment.
“So if you fix one thing, it creates another problem, so you have to be quite careful with that as well.”
And he continued to be quite vocal about the issues he and the team are currently facing, revealing that they don’t have a one-off Monza-spec rear wing – but emphasized he’s been dealing with similar balance problems “for a long time”:
“It doesn’t help that we don’t have a Monza wing, so we’ve been trimming the wing a lot and that’s not the most efficient way of going at it.
“But the balance shifts that I’m experiencing now, I’ve had for a long time.”
After finishing more than six tenths off the pace of pole-sitter and now championship rival Lando Norris, the Red Bull driver does not believe he will be able to take the fight to his rival in Sunday’s Grand Prix on pure pace, and instead is hoping unknowns with tyre usage might present an opportunity for him to rise up the order:
“No, we’re not [in the fight for victory]. We’re really too slow.
“The long runs, they might look good on paper, but it didn’t really feel like that personally.
“And the problem is that when you don’t have a balanced car, of course in the race that is quite painful on tyres also, so let’s see.
“Maybe with how the car is at the moment it might be a little bit better for the race, but we’re also starting in the back of, let’s say, the top group, so we just have to wait and see what happens in front of us.
“There are a few unknowns in the graining, actually, as well, so we’ll find out tomorrow.”
When asked about his calm and collected attitude towards what is turning out to be a losing battle as he tries to retain his world championship crown against a much faster McLaren, Verstappen admitted he accepted the reality that he “cannot do more” than what he is currently doing with the car he has had for the past few races:
“Well, it is what it is. I mean, I’m trying to do the best I can and more than that I cannot do.”
