Red Bull Racing is at a loss to understand why tire degradation was a problem for Max Verstappen overnight at the F1 Austrian Grand Prix and is currently investigating this issue.
Max Verstappen won an overwhelming victory over Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc and Carlos Sainz Jr. in the 23-lap sprint on Saturday. However, despite the fact that the parc fermé rules haven’t changed much from the previous day, the RB18 on Sunday was unable to compete with the Ferraris, causing an unusual degradation during the race.
Max Verstappen was able to finish in second place after Charles Leclerc, thanks to Carlos Sainz Jr.’s retirement due to an engine failure with 15 laps remaining, but without it, Sainz It was clear that he was overtaken by.
Since the start of the season, ties and degradation have not been a fundamental issue for Red Bull Racing. So last Sunday’s question needs an answer.
“It was weird,” said Christian Horner, Red Bull Racing’s F1 team representative.
“At Silverstone just a week ago, we looked pretty decent when it came to degradation.”
“I think the problem is that if these tires are very sensitive and not in the right window, they could be punished for degradation, as many teams did.”
“Looking at the sprint race, I pushed a little harder at first and got a little punishment at the end, but it was the same as Ferrari throughout the analysis.”
“The only thing that changed overnight was the rain, the temperature, and of course the fuel load.”
“Therefore, we need to understand why our degradation was significantly worse than Charles and Carlos in that first stint.”
Ferrari’s F1 team representative Mattia Binotto believes that Leclerc’s ability to put Max Verstappen under pressure on Sunday, in contrast to Saturday’s sprint, accelerated Verstappen’s degradation.
“I don’t think there’s a big difference in the pace of the two cars,” said Mattia Binotto.
“When it comes to tire degradation, I think we had a little better tire degradation in the sprint, but on Sunday we started putting pressure on Max from the start, which made it even better on Sunday.”
“We made him pace more and made the tires worse. I think the pressure on Max made what we saw in the sprint more apparent in the race.”
Category: Category: F1 / Red bull / F1 Austria GP
