Verstappen critical of Red Bull performance: 'Were just too slow'

Max Verstappen has little good to say about the performance of the Red Bull car at the Brazilian Grand Prix. In a press release after the race, the two-time world champion is very critical of his own car.

The Brazilian Grand Prix was by no means one of the better races of this season for Red Bull. An early crash between Verstappen and Lewis Hamilton condemned the Dutchman to a catch-up race and the conversation afterwards is mostly dominated by the friction between Verstappen and Sergio Perez. As a result, some might forget that the Red Bull simply could not deliver in terms of speed this weekend.

Besides Verstappen, Charles Leclerc also saw himself dropped to the backfield early on. But the Ferrari driver was able to fight his way back to the front considerably easier than Verstappen and eventually finished the race in fourth place, just off the podium. Perez could not really fight the battle at the front with George Russell and was then overtaken by Hamilton, Leclerc and Carlos Sainz. Possibly, with a few more laps, he could have managed to overtake Fernando Alonso for fifth place but all indications are that that was also the highest possible for Red Bull this weekend.

'We just didn't have the pace'

Verstappen acknowledged the same in the post-race press release. "We had no pace again today, similar to Saturday," said Verstappen, referring back to the sprint race which, in retrospect, turned out to be a foreshadowing of what would happen during Sunday's race. "We were sliding too much and we had bad degradation so it was hard to attack. I didn’t quite understand the five-second penalty for the incident with Lewis, but it didn’t affect the race too much as we already lacked pace."

Verstappen concluded by promising to help Perez in the final race of the season should the need arise. In doing so, he repeats the promise Christian Horner and Helmut Marko also made earlier.