Max Verstappen is highly critical of Red Bull; Ferrari is watching from the sidelines
Max Verstappen finished third in the United States Grand Prix, but at the end of the race in Austin, he made no secret of his dissatisfaction. According to the Dutch driver, Red Bull once again made too many mistakes, jeopardizing the chance for a better result. Complicating matters further were radio communication issues, which had already penalized him during the Singapore Grand Prix, when he was able to communicate only sporadically with his track engineer. Ferrari, which has always held Jos’s son in high regard, is waiting to see if there will be any developments in a relationship that no longer seems to be what it once was.
“This is the umpteenth time this has happened this year,” Max snapped, visibly irritated. “Maybe from now on we should communicate using sign language—it’d probably cost less, too. It’s a disaster, and it’s extremely frustrating.”
During the race, however, the four-time world champion’s problems weren’t limited to communications. In fact, Verstappen described Sunday’s performance as “not good enough,” highlighting the numerous difficulties the team encountered.
“It’s easy to say that in hindsight, of course, but for some reason the softer tires didn’t work particularly well today,” he explained. “Also, I think the order in which we used the tires wasn’t optimal. At a certain point, it became clear that the drivers on the harder tires had much more grip, but we didn’t react the right way. Perhaps we were too fixated on what we’d seen in the last two races, where the softer compounds had been the fastest. Today, however, that wasn’t the case.”
The Dutch driver then highlighted other technical issues that affected his performance.
“On top of that, we had too many issues with the power unit, which was very inconsistent in the corners,” he continued. “On every lap, in every corner, the response was different. Under these conditions, you can’t find a rhythm, and the car offers no consistency in its behavior. We also had a slow pit stop. In short, too many things went wrong.”
Verstappen finally explained that Red Bull struggled from the start to adapt to the characteristics of the American circuit.
“We’re not the fastest in the fast corners, nor in the slow ones. On a track like this, you should be able to excel in at least one of those two situations. If you can’t, you end up with a mediocre performance, and that’s exactly where we found ourselves today, even during the race. There are still so many areas where we need to improve.”
