Max Verstappen took pole position in qualifying on Friday, and the next day he took a relatively easy victory in the sprint race. When the moment of truth arrived, everything seemed to indicate that the reigning world champion was going to repeat his position in the main event at the Red Bull Ring .
But his goal was pushed further away when he suffered tire degradation far worse than rival Ferrari early in the race. He lost the lead to Charles Leclerc on lap 12 and just one lap later the Dutchman pitted to change his tyres.
From then on, Verstappen remained in the rear and was only able to overtake one of the Prancing Horse ‘s cars, Carlos Sainz’s, who had to leave due to an engine failure that left his car engulfed in flames when he was on his way to overtake him. .
Red Bull was unable to explain the change of pace from Saturday to Sunday, especially given F1’s parc fermé rules. This regulation means that the car settings were identical, which adds to the fact that the Austrian team has seemed to control degradation very well during the last few grands prix.
“It was weird,” said team boss Christian Horner .
“Just a week ago at Silverstone we looked pretty good in terms of degradation.
“I think the problem is that these tires are more sensitive and if you’re not in the right window with them then you can pay the price in terms of degradation, which a lot of teams did.
Horner says Red Bull will have to investigate what factors led to the change in form, having gone from being equal to Ferrari in the sprint to much worse in the grand prix itself.
“When you look at the sprint race, we pushed a little bit more at the beginning, we paid a little bit [the price] at the end, but based on our analysis throughout the stint, we were identical to Ferrari,” he explained.
“The only thing that has changed overnight is the rain, the temperature slightly and of course the fuel loads.”
“So we just have to understand why, in that first stint, our degradation was significantly worse than Charles [Leclerc] and Carlos [Sainz].”
Ferrari suspects that the main difference between the sprint and the grand prix was that Leclerc was able to put Verstappen under more pressure on Sunday, meaning the Dutchman was unable to manage his tires the way he would have liked.
Italian team principal Mattia Binotto stated: “I don’t think there is much of a difference in pace between the two cars, if any.”
“Regarding the tire degradation, my interpretation is that in the sprint we had a little bit of an advantage in the degradation of the compounds, which we have transformed even more [in the grand prix] because we started to put pressure on Max [Verstappen]. From the beginning”.
“We forced him to have more pace and to degrade the tires more. So I think what we saw in the sprint was more evident [in the race] because Max was put under more pressure,” concluded the Maranello boss.
