Max Verstappen laments Adrian Newey’s Red Bull exit after disastrous Italian GP with ‘monster’ RB20
Adrian Newey had a massive role in preparing Max Verstappen's world championship-winning cars.
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Adrian Newey and Max Verstappen (via IMAGO)
The 2024 F1 season has been nothing short of a rollercoaster. Red Bull has been dealt with major blows as the team has found itself in shambles since its design wizard Adrian Newey, announced his exit. The Austrian giant has found it difficult to win races and has barely managed to score podiums. This urged Max Verstappen to reveal how important the Brit was in the team by lamenting his exit, in recent races Verstappen has been facing the wrath of the undrivable RB20.
The Red Bull RB20 was understood to bring major success to the Milton Keynes-based squad as the team aimed to recreate its 2023 exploits. In stark contrast, the Austrian giant’s absence from the top three has increased in the past few weeks and they’ve realized that they made a mistake while choosing the car philosophy. This made the RB20 disobedient, which started to gain understeer characteristics as the season progressed.
Moreover, one such instance was noticed at the Italian GP when Ferrari and McLaren fought for the top spots, Red Bull only managed to salvage a P6 and a P8 finish.
I've always said that I would have liked for Adrian[Newey] to stay. Always, but it's not about that now, because last year we had a great car, which was the most dominant car ever, and we basically turned it into a monster. So we have to turn it around.Max Verstappen said in an interview with RacingNews365
Max Verstappen has so far managed to amass seven Grand Prix wins in the 2024 season. As the campaign has progressed, the performance output of the RB20 has declined and this is one of the main issues Red Bull has to sort out ahead of Baku.
Has Lando Norris’ P3 finish aided Max Verstappen in the driver’s title tussle?
While Verstappen battled the RB20 to bring home a P6 finish in Monza, his championship rival Lando Norris fumbled his race by losing the chance to win the Italian GP. The Brit made quite a few mistakes on the first lap. He then recovered to P3 and earned the bonus point for the fastest lap, however, no bandage could heal the wounds of losing yet another race starting from the pole position.
Norris’ third-place finish limited the damage in the driver’s championship for Verstappen.
In a way, yes, but that’s not how I like to look at the championship. We have to go from our own fortunes, and today and this whole weekend has been very bad.Max Verstappen said in an interview with Formu1a.uno
Though the 53-lap Italian GP was not a great day for the reigning champion, he explained that he could not stay in the belief that his rival would mess up his race again. This led him to urge Red Bull to resolve the problems soon as Norris would not always have bad days and could gain a huge haul of points in any race.
On the constructor’s front, Red Bull’s lead has shrunk to just eight points. Also, Ferrari has now come into the picture as they are only 39 points away. Thus, the reigning champions risk losing both the first and the runners-up spot in the standings if their woes continue going forward.
In case you missed it:
- McLaren deems Ferrari’s competitiveness as ‘good news’ in taking ‘points off Red Bull’
- Toto Wolff labels Italian GP as Max Verstappen and Red Bull’s ‘worst race in many years’
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Geetansh Pasricha
(772 Articles Published)