Max Verstappen was not completely satisfied with finishing fifth in Baku. That is not because the RB20 is still a 'monster'—the word he called his car back in Monza—but because he went down the wrong path in terms of the setup at the Azerbaijan Grand Prix.
Verstappen: 'We paid the price for that'
"I think we just paid the price with the changes that we made into qualifying. That made it just really difficult to drive. The car was jumping around a lot, the wheels were coming off the ground in the low-speed corners. When you don't have a contact patch with the tarmac, it's very difficult," Verstappen summed up his problems, to media including GPblog.
Verstappen was not surprised that his car felt pretty good up to qualifying, but then was less satisfied with the changes made to his RB20 afterwards. "You try to make changes always to make the car better, but unfortunately, what we did made it worse," he explained.
On the other hand, Sergio Perez was in fine form in Baku, a track the Mexican usually prefers. Perez was on his way to finish on the podium, but then he collided with Carlos Sainz on the penultimate lap. "It's of course never nice to see that. It didn't help, of course, what happened there with Checo and Carlos. I'm sure that we can do better. The fight is not over yet. We'll try to get that back," concluded the Dutchman about where things stand in the constructors' standings following the Grand Prix in Baku, as Red Bull Racing now trail McLaren by exactly 20 points.
This article was written in collaboration with Nicole Mulder
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Why is this continuing to happen? RB is continuing to make the wrong adjustments week after week. Don't tell me it's the loss of Newey. He was the designer of the cars, not the week to week engineers. Why have does it seem as if the engineers have forgotten how to adjust the daggum cars?
Max should have a chat with Lewis as they currently are in cars that are terrible for them, yet their teammates, Pérez & Russell, seem to have the ability to driver through those issues ?
PER drove through the issues once this year. Other than that, PER is completely lost. The situation at MB is different. RUS indeed gets better along in - let's say - not so good cars. More often than HAM.
@J41L, Pérez has had it hard at Redbull, remember this : Perez's current F1 issues "psychological", not car issue - Marko Sergio Perez's current Formula 1 qualifying woes are "psychological", according to Red Bull advisor Helmut Marko, following the Mexican's Q1 exit at the Canadian Grand Prix. Russell has been much better than Lewis with in the same car, i did acknowledge that didn't I.
This is why those two cases are not comparable. You just proved it by yourself. You're just into mocking VER (as usual). PER won one battle against VER so far this season. And you try to make look like PER is generally better. In this regard, it's HAM who should ask VER how to drive a bad car. Especially in Baku where HAM was complaining about a planted front and loose rear, something VER likes.
"Max is superior in every area vs Max" Max superior to Max? You better don't become a humorist. You won't go far, believe me ?
@J41L, Max is superior in every area vs *Pérez, we have seen that for the last 2 seasons, on occasion Pérez benefited from some good fortune and the rare mistake from Max but all in all they have been in diffrent post codes. My tongue in cheek comment is both drivers Max and Lewis are in bad cars, but the humour is lost on you J41L. *changed to Pérez
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