Marco: Our car was one of the slowest

Max Verstappen finished sixth in Monza, equaling his worst result of the season, while Sergio Perez finished the race in eighth. After the finish of the Italian Grand Prix, Red Bull motorsport advisor Helmut Marko did not deny that the championship-winning team was in serious trouble.

“Our car was one of the slowest on the straights,” Marco said after the race at German Sky. “But we couldn’t put an even smaller rear wing on the car. It’s necessary to bring back the balance in the car, and to do this we have to find the point after which we took a wrong turn. It’s necessary to return to the moment when the car was still competitive.

In the race we couldn’t compete with the leaders in terms of strategy and pace. We just didn’t have enough speed. As soon as Max started to attack harder, the rubber started to granulate immediately. Max couldn’t use his ability to drive to the limit, because the car didn’t allow it and behaved too unpredictably.

At times there was understeer and then it was replaced by oversteer. The car behaved unstable when braking when entering corners. After some updates the car lost its balance and because of this the drivers can’t attack with all their power.”

On another TV channel, Austria’s ORF, Helmut Marko was pleased that McLaren did not use team tactics and forbade its drivers to fight, which left the British team and Lando Norris with fewer points than they could have: “We are pleased that Ferrari won thanks to a daring but ultimately successful strategy.

And we are very happy with McLaren’s sporting principles. This was evident from the battle of their riders on the first lap, and from the fact that they did not change riders closer to the finish. That made our poor performance less noticeable. It could have been worse, but the gap is about the same as in Zandvoort.”