How Does He Explain the Surprise Comeback?

Max Verstappen left the Formula 1 Singapore Grand Prix with a second-place finish, despite appearing unreachable at the beginning of the weekend.

With known weaknesses of Red Bull’s RB20 over bumps and curbs, the focus entering the race weekend was to minimize damage. However, after Friday’s practice, things looked even bleaker as both Verstappen and Sergio Perez struggled with their cars.

Both drivers were dissatisfied with the car’s grip, the tires weren’t warming up, and there was a risk of getting stuck in the race while only managing to score a reasonable amount of points. After the first day, Red Bull motorsport advisor Helmut Marko commented, “Nothing is working on Max’s car. There’s no grip on either the soft or hard tires, and it has no balance.”

The confusion in Singapore was addressed through late-night engineering sessions with Sebastien Buemi at the factory and Red Bull simulator in Milton Keynes, where they worked to improve car settings and identify what was going wrong.

Team principal Christian Horner said about Buemi’s efforts: “He was consuming a lot of Red Bull to stay awake. Like the entire team, he played a significant role by working hard through long days and nights.”

Finally, the team had its “eureka” moment and understood the issues with the car. This realization was linked to the challenging encounter in 2023, where they faced significant difficulties with the track characteristics, which ultimately allowed Ferrari and Carlos Sainz to claim victory.

As a result, Red Bull, concerned about repeating the issues they experienced on Singapore’s curbs and bumps, had adopted a cautious approach in their mechanical setup to handle the track characteristics. However, in their focus on improving the car to assist Verstappen and Perez, they had ultimately compromised too much on performance.

There was insufficient mechanical grip, which prevented the tires from entering their optimal working range. For Saturday, Red Bull chose to sacrifice some of the better handling characteristics and focus more on pure performance, which helped the RB20 suddenly come alive.

As Horner later noted, “I think we wanted to avoid a repeat of last year, and perhaps we were overly cautious. I believe the way the team responded and the effort put into that response allowed us to give Max a much better car on Saturday. Obviously, we couldn’t compete with Lando in the race, but we outperformed all the other cars.”

The Singapore result, a significant improvement compared to last year, helped Verstappen maintain his championship lead and raised hopes that Red Bull’s recent struggles were behind them.

Now heading to Austin with a significant margin, Red Bull hopes to extract even more from the car to fend off the McLaren threat. Horner added, “I think we have a development path, and I believe we’ve understood some of the issues with the car, and we’re starting to address them. We were better in Baku, we were better here. So yes, there will be many late nights in Milton Keynes.”