Will the new technical directive affect McLaren? Verstappen answers!
F1 News
Max Verstappen is not to worried about focusing on the FIA's new technical directive about the rear wings, and how that would affect his rivals at McLaren. The Dutchman rather focus on the RB21 instead in China.
Over the course of week, it was announced that a new technical directive will come into effect, already heading into the Chinese Grand Prix, as the FIA try to completely remove the use of the so-called 'Mini DRS'. Even stricter tests will now take place, as the 'slot gap' must vary by more than 0.5 millimetres (with a 0.25 tolerance gap because of short notice), while that was previously 2 millimetres.
Verstappen on the effect of the new technical directive
In China, Verstappen was also asked whether this change would affect their rivals, McLaren. However, the defending world champion prefers to think about his own team instead: "I have no idea. I don't want to think about it also. You can speculate about it, but I'm just focused on what I need to do here with the team. That's the only thing that we can control."
Over the previous season, Red Bull struggled with the balance of the car. However, Verstappen saw that in Melbourne, that was not the issue, but instead the RB21 overheated the tyres in the final sector. "My balance in qualifying in Melbourne was not too bad. I don't think the balance is the main issue. I ran out of tyres in the last sector, like overheating, and I think a lot of teams were struggling with that but it just seemed like like [for] McLaren it wasn't as much," he continued.
He continued with talking about how his team still faces a challenge in terms of dealing with bumps and kerbs. "Now Melbourne is not the bumpiest track but still a few bumps in some areas and that is definitely something that I picked up on. The rest of the corners I think in the very high speed we were not too bad with our wing that we ran also in Melbourne, but then again it just depends so much on how you set up the car."
Verstappen concluded: "Sometimes you can be a bit better in high speed, sometimes a bit better in medium speed or whatever. But I think in general we just need to be better as a whole. If you compare that to McLaren, they're good everywhere."
This article was written in collaboration with Nicole Mulder
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