Max Verstappen’s frustration ran high during the Hungarian Formula 1 Grand Prix and was heard around the world on his team’s radio. A far cry from the dominance of 2023 and the start of this season, Verstappen’s struggles — and the reaction to them — point to potential cracks in a team that once seemed impregnable. Verstappen appeared upset at the start after Red Bull told him to give up his position to Lando Norris. An incident on the first lap saw the Dutchman go off the track at Turn 1 and gain an advantage as he and the McLarens went three-way.

“Then you can tell the FIA ​​that that’s how we will race from now on,” the Dutchman said over the radio. “Just get everyone off the track.”

The radio messages increased as the race continued, sometimes including swear words. Rivals took down Verstappen at both pit stops after he was out for a few laps. He said after the race, “Wrong strategy calls put me at a disadvantage as I was constantly fighting people, trying to get by, but it wasn’t working.” The car was equipped with a major upgrade package, which did not feel the best. Verstappen drove behind Lewis Hamilton for much of the race, fighting for the final podium position.

It ended with the RB20 flying into the air as Verstappen collided with Hamilton’s right front wheel with seven laps to go. The driver’s car was slightly damaged and Verstappen complained about Hamilton’s ability to move under braking. But race engineer Gianpiero Lambiase quelled Verstappen’s radio fury.
“I won’t even get into a radio war with the other teams, Max. We will let the managers do their job,” Lambiase said. “It’s so childish on the radio. Children.” (Red Bull team boss Christian Horner felt Lambiase’s message was about the other teams, not about the Dutchman).

All of this culminated in Verstappen claiming fifth place, his second-worst finish this year in the races he has entered. Along with Sergio Pérez’s seventh place, Red Bull only won 16 points. A world away from the epic victories courtesy of Verstappen that were once the norm.
Red Bull may have started the 2024 season as the most dominant team and looks set to continue to dominate. Verstappen drove at a very high level and the pit stops were mostly clean. But the car was a different story as other cars on the track, such as McLaren, were quick to catch up with the Milton Keynes-based team. And on a weekend when Red Bull are not the fastest team, rare strategic mistakes could cost them their chances of a podium spot.

“I know that this will be a difficult race, and beating McLaren will be very difficult,” said Verstappen. “But then you need to at least get P3 to the finish line, and even that is difficult.”

Some experts criticized Verstappen’s radio message.

This is not the first time his radio conversation with Lambiase has become a topic of discussion. The pair quarreled during the 2023 Belgian GP, ​​but no underlying tensions existed. However, Verstappen’s frustration was evident during the Hungarian GP last weekend.

At one point, Verstappen addressed the source of his frustration, saying over the team radio, “It’s impressive that we managed to get cut. That completely ruined my race. ” He was cut down twice before the race ended. On the first round of pit stops, the Red Bull driver became trapped in dirty air when Hamilton’s tires began to fall off and lost a position. During the second round of pit stops, Verstappen lost one position to Charles Leclerc.

Dirty air can slow down a vehicle because it negatively affects the aerodynamic performance of the vehicle behind it and reduces downforce. It doesn’t help that Verstappen’s car isn’t as quick compared to his opponents as it was earlier this season or last year.

Later in the race, Lambiase suggested that Verstappen had tried too hard with a new set of tyres, saying, “Oh, that was a gentle introduction.” Verstappen fumed: “No mate, don’t tell me that now. You guys gave me this strategy, okay? I’m trying to salvage what’s left.”

These radio moments occurred in the heat of the moment, and only a portion was broadcast. Verstappen dismissed the suggestion that his radio messages were worse than usual, saying, “No, I don’t agree with that. But I’m just annoyed with (Sunday) and maybe the team The racers didn’t realize at the time that I thought they were doing something wrong, or maybe they didn’t see that it was that serious. But in the car, you have a lot of different emotions.”
Verstappen and Lambiase have worked together for eight years and are known for their straightforward communication style. But some critics may feel Verstappen has disrespected his team. When the proposal was put to him in the media, Verstappen said of those critics, “They can go away.”

Sky Sports asked the Dutchman about the messages and whether he needed to apologise, but he dismissed the idea. “I don’t think we need to apologize. I just think we need to do better. I don’t know why people think you can’t speak up on the radio. This is a sport. If some people don’t like it, then stay home.”

Some experts suggested that Verstappen’s frustration during the race could have been related to his simulated racing. The night before the grand prix, he raced until 3am, but this is nothing new. The Red Bull driver has won races in the past on weekends when he participated in simulated racing, like at Imola.

“I think people draw conclusions, but Max knows what’s needed, and we trust his judgment on that,” Horner said. “He knows what it takes to drive a grand prix race car and win grand prix and become world champion. And look, as a team, we always work as a team, and any discussion about how to improve will never happen through the media.”

But the difference now is that Red Bull is no longer the fastest racing team. Since Imola, four other drivers have won races, while Verstappen has claimed two wins (Canada and Spain). This season is the first since the 2021 title battle with Hamilton that Verstappen has felt real pressure. Ferrari challenged at the start of 2022 before Red Bull and Verstappen walked away with the titles. At this race last year, he won his seventh consecutive victory (by a margin of 33 seconds) and extended the team’s unbeaten record at that time.

But this year’s Hungarian GP marks the first time since 2021 that Verstappen has gone three races without winning.

“With stable regulations, profit margins go up — you’re in a curve where profits are going to get harder and harder to find,” Horner said. “It’s normal. That’s a normal cycle. I have been in this industry for 20 years; that’s what happens. That doesn’t mean you accept it. That means you just have to work harder to find incremental profits and make good races and reach the top of the game.

“We know we need to improve in the second half of the year.”
On Saturday, Verstappen punched the steering wheel as he crossed the finish line in Q3. His lap time put him in P3 and was 0.046 seconds behind Lando Norris’s pole position time. When asked for his reaction, he said, “Am I not allowed to be disappointed? Yes, that’s what happened.”

Red Bull doesn’t have the speed yet to claim they have the fastest car. As the rest of the grid closed the gap, McLaren emerged as the biggest threat. In the first six races of the year, Red Bull opened up a 115-point gap over the Woking-based team – after McLaren’s 1-2 finish in Hungary, the gap narrowed to 51 points.

Red Bull brought to Hungary a series of upgrades that Verstappen described as “a little bit bigger than what we brought”, adding that “for everyone, this has been a great week”. important”. The Hungarian GP marks the penultimate race before the summer break, which includes a two-week break. For 14 days, teams are not allowed to work on vehicle design or production.

Verstappen agrees that this upgrade is important for Red Bull’s near future. “If this doesn’t give us some good lap times, then I don’t know how the rest of the season is going to go. But at the same time, I don’t know what other teams will do. We only focus on ourselves. We’re putting quite a bit of stuff into the car, and I’m hoping that will give us quite a bit of lap time.”

But as the weekend wore on, McLaren remained ahead of Verstappen, and third place looked the best he could achieve. Questions of strategy aside, Red Bull will look at the data collected last weekend to see where to optimize the car. Horner said the car will be “differently spec’d again” at Spa this weekend. Are the upgrades in Hungary ineffective?

“We needed to widen the performance window for the car, so when the car was in the right window it qualified for pole by four-tenths in Austria, and then (in Hungary) we missed pole by a little more than one in ten,” Horner said. “But you can see when you listen to the driver, especially Max, he has limitations in the car that he knows are performance, the trick is how do you turn those into solutions, technical and aerodynamic.”

Upgrading takes time, and Hungary and Spa are two different types of tracks. “We need to work. I mean, it’s not like suddenly next weekend we might have new upgrades to the car. Yes, it is a problem,” Verstappen told F1TV. He added that they need to improve the package, but now, “I think race pace, qualifying pace, we are falling behind.”

A title battle is underway in F1, and there’s not much room for error. As Horner puts it, Red Bull had a “unicorn year” in 2023. But now they’re under pressure to perform at their typically high levels.