Championship leader Max Verstappen appears to be concerned about Red Bull’s pace after Lando Norris dominated the Dutch GP on Sunday; Norris is Verstappen’s closest rival in the title race; watch this weekend’s Italian GP at Monza live on Sky Sports F1
Max Verstappen admitted Red Bull’s pace was “a bit alarming” after he failed to stop Lando Norris dominating the Dutch Formula 1 Grand Prix.
Norris overcame a poor start to beat Verstappen by nearly 23 seconds on Sunday at Zandvoort, and also set the fastest lap on the final lap to earn himself an extra point.
Verstappen still leads Norris by 70 points in the Drivers’ Championship with nine events to go but has not won in his last five races – his longest winless run since 2020.
“The last few races have not been great. In a way, it’s a bit alarming,” Verstappen said.
“We don’t need to panic, we are trying to improve. That’s what we are doing but F1 is very complicated.
“There is something in the car that makes it more difficult to drive and it’s difficult to pinpoint exactly what it is at the moment. That affected our lap performance and our long-distance pace.”
Norris, who is in the race for his first F1 title, also beat Verstappen by more than three-tenths of a point in qualifying and had better tyres in the race.
McLaren have brought upgrades to Zandvoort and appear to be continuing their upward trend from before the summer.
However, Red Bull will be interested in how far Verstappen finishes behind Norris on a track where the Dutchman has previously had a perfect lap record, plus Norris easily overtaking the championship leader.
“I’m not surprised by how I feel in the car. There’s nothing I can do. Everything I tried to do… I said in the race, no matter what I did with the car, the inputs didn’t really reflect that,” Verstappen told Sky Sports F1.
“When I turned left, I didn’t feel it immediately. Or it didn’t turn the way I wanted. It’s complicated to understand why that was and how we can fix that.
“The positive was the start but from the start of the race, Lando was waiting for his chance. I was a little bit behind and couldn’t adjust the tyres. He came and from that point on I was focused on getting it to the finish line in the best possible position.”
Asked if the RB20 was the most difficult car he has ever driven in F1, he added: “It’s not the easiest car! There are a few things we are looking at and hopefully we can improve the situation quickly. But only time will tell.”
Red Bull run different cars at Zandvoort
Red Bull’s lead in the Constructors’ Championship was cut to 30 points over McLaren as Oscar Piastri finished fourth and Sergio Perez sixth.
After winning four of the opening five races, Red Bull may have gone off the rails in the European leg of the F1 season, which starts in May.
That’s one explanation for their lack of pace, and team principal Christian Horner revealed Verstappen and Perez ran different car specs in the Netherlands to understand their issues.
“McLaren was very quick today. Everyone acknowledged that. We gambled a little bit because we thought the drag would be quite high, so we increased the drag to the maximum,” he said.
“If the downshift was high, we thought that would help. In the end, the downshift was low and it made us slow on the straights with Max.
“The benefit was that we ran both cars with different specifications, so we collected a lot of data. It was important that we understood and used that data. Max was very clear about where we needed to improve.”
