Verstappen: Red Bull’s main issue is F1 car, not drivers

Max Verstappen has steered his Purple Bull System 1 staff must deal with fixing its troubled 2025 automotive slightly than fear in regards to the id of his team-mate.

After two tough weekends alongside Verstappen, Red Bull has demoted Liam Lawson to Racing Bulls, with Yuki Tsunoda moving in the other direction from this weekend’s Japanese Grand Prix.

Whereas Purple Bull has the remit to maneuver its 4 drivers round throughout the 2 groups it owns, and has carried out so previously, handing Lawson simply two rounds to adapt has been felt as significantly merciless by colleagues and observers.

Former F1 driver Giedo van der Garde likened Purple Bull’s method to ‘bullying’ on his Instagram profile. “Sure, you gotta carry out. Sure, the strain is insane. However for my part this comes nearer to bullying or a panic transfer than precise excessive athlete achievements,” he stated. “They decided – totally conscious – gave Liam two races solely to crush his spirit.”

The put up was favored by Verstappen, who in keeping with driver advisor Helmut Marko disagreed with the choice to swap drivers. And whereas the Dutchman did not need to broaden an excessive amount of on his personal opinion, he stated he did not work together with Van der Garde’s message by mistake and felt Purple Bull’s principal focus must be on the drivability and efficiency of its tough 2025 automotive.

“Properly, I favored the textual content, so I assume that speaks for itself, proper? It was not a mistake,” he stated. “My response was shared with the staff, however normally. Not solely the swap, however about every little thing. We mentioned that already over the past race weekend and again on the manufacturing unit.”

When requested if he agreed with the choice, he responded: “Typically it is not essential to all the time share every little thing in public.

“I feel our principal difficulty is that our automotive shouldn’t be the place we wish it to be. Everybody is aware of that throughout the staff as properly and that is what I deal with, to be trustworthy. As a result of as quickly because the automotive is extra aggressive and extra drivable normally, then I feel even within the second automotive it is going to come to you anyway a bit extra naturally.

“Liam did 11 races or one thing in complete [before 2025] however over a distinct time period. And I feel for rookies the start of the season may be very robust, as a result of most of those tracks they have not actually pushed on, or they merely have a dash weekend. So all these eventualities do not assist.”

Verstappen, who hung out in Purple Bull’s UK manufacturing unit to have a deep dive with the staff’s engineers into his automotive’s issues, stated there is not only one difficulty that’s inflicting the RB21 to change into unstable and lack steadiness.

“It’s a little bit extra nervous, just a little bit extra unstable in numerous nook phases,” the Dutchman defined. “I feel it is a mixture of lots of issues. It relies upon additionally on the nook velocity, the tarmac, tyres, overheating, bumps, kerbs. Some tracks are extra limiting than others. Some points are simpler to resolve than others. Everyone seems to be making an attempt their hardest to make the automotive quicker.”

Verstappen heads into the Japan weekend second within the standings after grabbing second in Australia’s rain-affected race and salvaging fourth in China, however he nonetheless believes McLaren is “comfortably forward” and can be onerous to catch.

“Each observe is a bit totally different, however in the mean time, they’re fairly comfortably forward,” the four-time world champion added. “By no means say by no means. We come to each race making an attempt to get the very best out of the automotive however in the mean time, I do not suppose even when we optimise our efficiency, that’s sufficient. However we preserve working.

“We’re making an attempt to have the efficiency coming this yr nonetheless, but when it should be sufficient to beat McLaren it’s totally tough to say, as a result of the others are additionally enhancing.”

Extra reporting by Erwin Jaeggi