Max Verstappen had a litany of complaints after the British Grand Prix, where his Red Bull spun off into the gravel at Stowe corner with six laps to run.
Verstappen had been in contention for third place at the time despite battling with poor handling balance, electrical deployment and gearbox issues throughout.
Afterwards he expressed his frustration – not just at the wing failure that pitched him off the track, but also at the team’s decision not to change the engine, even though he had flagged up major issues with it after qualifying on Saturday.
“Look, he’s right not to be happy,” said Red Bull boss Laurent Mekies. “It is very unpleasant for drivers to be let down by the car in the high-speed corners in two consecutive races, albeit for two different reasons.
“And it is in a much lower scale, also extremely unpleasant for us as a group to send our drivers to the gravel trap. So, he’s right to be unhappy.
“I have no doubt that as a team that will put in place what is necessary for that not to happen again, even if we failed to do that today and we take that as seriously as one can do.”
Verstappen had been battling with Mercedes’ George Russell, who ultimately finished second
Photo by: Getty Images
Red Bull’s rear wing has been the focus of intrigue since Verstappen crashed during qualifying for last weekend’s Austrian Grand Prix at the Red Bull Ring, where a delayed transition out of Straight Line Mode (SLM) was blamed for inducing the spin.
Active aerodynamics, where front and rear wing flaps can be adjusted to reduce drag in designated SLM zones on the track, were introduced this season to reduce the demand on the engine’s limited reserves of electrical energy.
But it’s in the nature of airflow that it doesn’t instantly reattach to the wing surfaces when the active aero is disengaged at the end of the SLM zone, which can induce a transient period of instability in the car as the downforce balance and tyre loadings change.
At the Miami Grand Prix weekend Red Bull introduced a so-called ‘Macarena wing’, similar to a concept already shown by Ferrari, but developed independently. With this, the entire top plane of the rear wing rotates by roughly 180 degrees rather than being pushed or pulled into a flatter angle of attack.
The design is believed to offer a useful performance advantage, but the actuation mechanism is rather more complicated, and the passage of air around the wing plane rather more torturous during its rotational phase.
“We certainly understand what happened at the Red Bull Ring,” said Mekies. “I’m not going to go into the details because I don’t think it would be right, but we understand the failure.
Laurent Mekies, Team Principal, Red Bull Racing
Photo by: Max Slovencik / Getty Images
“And yes, from the early analysis of today, we have suffered a different type of failure. It doesn’t make it better. It is clear that in the succession of events, whether or not the failure is different doesn’t really matter. We are going to review the full area to make sure we leave zero chance for that to happen again.
“We have raced quite a few races with that concept now. It’s too early in the analysis to establish whether it’s an issue with the concept or something else. But we are going, for sure, to leave no stone unturned when it comes to it and we have all the options open.”
But Verstappen will not be easily mollified.
“A different fault, let’s say, but the same outcome,” he said. “So again, while turning into the corner, the rear wing is not fully attaching and you lose a lot of downforce for that – you just spin off the track.
“At that point it’s super dangerous, because you can really hurt yourself – two times. I was lucky in Austria, I was lucky here, but that’s why you get really fed up with it.”
He also questioned the decision not to change the car’s engine or set-up, even though that would have resulted in him having to start from the pitlane.
“I wanted to start from the pitlane,” he said. “They were maybe confident to fix it [the engine’s deployment issues], which I was not.”
Verstappen has been critical of his car all season
Photo by: Getty Images
Mekies countered by saying that if Verstappen had started from the pitlane he wouldn’t have been in contention for third. “After qualifying, it was clear we were not very happy with the balance of the car, to say the least,” he explained.
“Changing the set-up of the car would simply mean starting from the pitlane. And while we knew it wasn’t going to be pleasant to go with a very unperfect balance into the race, we still felt that it would give us better results than starting from the pitlane with perhaps something better.
“Now, it’s something we’ve discussed with Max. I completely accept he may have a different feeling and he’s driving the car, so that’s what it is.
“But at the end of the day, there were important learnings today. To his point, the car probably felt similar to what he had yesterday, so we hit the limitations we knew we had yesterday.
“I’m not completely sure that we could have been P3 on the road – before the failure happened, if we had started from the pitlane.”
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– The Autosport.com Team
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