Red Bull has revealed that Max Verstappen’s hopes of challenging Lando Norris for the race win in Formula 1’s Miami Grand Prix were derailed by floor damage.
Verstappen himself said the car didn’t feel any different after he hit the bollard.
Sure, maybe it damaged something. Or maybe he picked up damage from something else, debris or whatever. But it’s also clear that Red Bull didn’t get the setup right in Miami and that McLaren had serious pace.
Imola is going to clear all this away. No sprint setup excuses, a normal race weekend. We will see if the challenge from McLaren is real (please be real) or not.
It’s not like Max was flying before the damage either. He was pulling away a little, sure, but nothing like usual. It’s clear the McLaren was just really fast here, just look at the relative laptimes of both Piastri and Norris before Max’s supposed damage.
I’m more inclined to think Max’s pace was lacking due to setup problems. It has happened before for Redbull, in particular on sprints. We’ll see in Imola just how well the new McLaren upgrades work. I suspect we’ll be back to our regularly scheduled programming, but I hope I’m wrong.
I have my fingers crossed for a real red bull, ferrari, McLaren fight at Imola
Ngl it sounds like red bull are just coming up with excuses when max himself said that it was just a setup issue.
Well the team doesn’t want to blame itself
