Max Verstappen was very dissatisfied with the car at the start of the third training session in Las Vegas, did not hide his irritation, said that it could not be controlled and that he risked an accident.
At the same time, he was closer to the final lines of timing, but then he returned to the pits, the team worked on his car – and the picture changed! As a result, Max finished the session with a 5th fastest time and after completing training, Christian Horner, head of Red Bull Racing, commented on the situation.
Christian Horner: “At the very beginning of practice, when the track was apparently not in the best condition, we did a long series of laps and only destroyed a set of tires. It looked terrible, but then we changed some settings on Max’s car, switched to soft tires, and the RB20 was much closer to optimal balance.
Max was already much more satisfied with the car and if he drove six seconds slower than the leaders at the start of the session, he was able to win back, although that is very difficult. All this gave me great hope.
In general, we pay more attention to race preparation than to qualifying: if the rate of tire degradation remains the same as now, there will be four pit stops in the race and we simply will not have enough tires. ! Obviously, as the track is open to regular traffic during the day, the asphalt can be quite dirty at the start of the race.”
Horner also addressed the RB20’s rear wing situation in Las Vegas, where rumors circulated that the wing installed on the car was not well suited to this high-speed track.
“There are no problems with the wing and I don’t know why these discussions have started,” said the Milton Keynes team leader. “But we simply don’t have a wing specifically designed for low-downforce circuits. In theory, such a wing would be suitable for Monza and for this circuit.
Given the limited budget, we decided not to spend money on its creation, because we have to choose what we spend and what we save on. And the wing we have has to be redesigned in a special way to achieve a high maximum speed, but many teams have done this. And now everything is fine with the speed on the straights, plus we use different engine modes.”
Source: F1 News
I am Christopher Clyde, an experienced journalist and content writer with a passion for sports. I have been writing about Formula 1 news for the past five years and am currently employed as an author at athletistic.com, one of the top sports websites in the US.
