Max Verstappen says he doesn’t have the pace to compete higher than fifth in the Mexico City Grand Prix and must stay out of trouble on Sunday.
Red Bull came into the weekend in Mexico in strong form, with Verstappen winning three of the previous four races – plus the COTA Sprint – and finishing second behind George Russell in Singapore. However, strong one-lap pace on Friday was accompanied by poor fuel consumption performance and Verstappen says the team was unable to solve the problem after qualifying fifth.
“There’s not much more to say; it was just very difficult,” said Verstappen. “We tried a lot of things, no shortage of tries, but it wasn’t great, let’s put it that way.
“Don’t know [the cause]; just no grip, won’t turn… I have no traction, it’s sliding…
“We weren’t good here last year. I mean, people always think, ‘Ah, you’ve won here five times, you must be good here,’ but last year we weren’t good either, and the years before that we probably had a big advantage of not really suffering, and now we’re definitely not good.”
Given the recent momentum he has built in the title fight, Verstappen knows how costly it could be to lose significant points to the McLarens, and he does not think he can realistically make any gains off the line given his long-term performance.
“No pace, so it doesn’t matter what I do in Turn 1, even if I jump over two cars, they’ll get me in the race,” he said. “I just have to stay out of trouble and run my own race, but every lap I did in the long run was weak compared to the cars in front of me, so I’ll just try to follow and see what we can do.
“I’ll find out for myself tomorrow. If you have the chance, go for it, but I’m more concerned about our pure pace. That just wasn’t good this weekend.”
Team boss Laurent Mekies believes that Red Bull has failed to get the car into its best performance period, but that any gains in race pace will only be visible on Sunday.
“It’s fair to say that so far we haven’t quite managed to put the car in a good place this weekend,” Mekies told F1 TV. “Certainly with Max, you’ve probably heard him very loudly since yesterday and we tried a lot of things, but we couldn’t quite find a way to give him a car that he could push with. With the kind of level of competition, that’s the price you immediately pay as soon as you fall out of your window. It’s part of the game – we learn from it, and it’s still a very long race tomorrow.”
“A lot of our focus overnight was on trying to see if we could improve the race pace. Whether this is what exposed us a little more in the short term is hard to say at the moment. I think the real answer lies after the race.”
“Lando looks really fast. The Ferrari also looks very fast this weekend, but it’s still a very long race. It’s a hot race, everyone is at their limits with the cooling of the car and with the brake cooling, so a lot can still happen. You have all our competitors around us, so I’m sure it won’t be a boring race.”
#Worried #Verstappen #speed #fight #avoid #problems #Mexico #RACER