Red Bull reveals cause of Hungarian GP meltdown

Ninth place for Max Verstappen from eighth on the grid, and a lapped 18th for Yuki Tsunoda from a pitlane start, represented a crushing underperformance in Hungary for a team with Red Bull Racing’s bulging trophy cabinet. 

Red Bull advisor Helmut Marko highlighted strategy as one of the elements that failed to work out for the team, but said fifth or sixth would still have been the best Verstappen could have expected in the Hungarian Grand Prix. 

“One stop would have been better because the overtaking was really difficult,” he told reporters after the race. 

“So maybe sixth or fifth, but the speed… it’s just funny, two or three laps, he was doing the same laps as the leaders – but we believe we know what went wrong. 

“On the first stop the tyres were gone, and the second stop we thought we could overtake – but as we saw for a couple of laps, yes, the speed was there, but then it was over.” 

Max started eighth, lost a place to Liam Lawson on the opening lap, quickly regained it and then passed Lance Stroll for seventh with an opportunist move at Turn 6 on the third lap. But he was then stuck in the DRS train behind Gabriel Bortoleto’s Sauber and Fernando Alonso’s Aston Martin. 

During the race, Verstappen fulminated about the timing of his first stop at the end of lap 17, which put him out into traffic – but this was fundamentally because the queue that had formed behind Alonso, stretching all the way to Tsunoda in P19, began to splinter when Alonso stepped up his pace by around a second per lap. Some teams broke early for two-stop strategies, but the majority directed their drivers to extend their first stints with a view to stopping just once. 

Verstappen therefore became enmired behind drivers who were managing their pace on a track where it is historically challenging to overtake. Crucially, he was behind the other Sauber of Nico Hulkenberg, who had stopped early to get rid of the soft tyres on which he’d started. 

It took four laps to get by Hulkenberg – with another determined move into Turn 6 – then another two to pass Pierre Gasly’s Alpine. Verstappen also spent five laps harrying Lewis Hamilton for 11th place, finally forcing his way past at Turn 4 with a move that earned him a referral to the stewards. 

By that point Verstappen had long since used up his new-tyre advantage, although he passed Racing Bulls’ Isack Hadjar for a net ninth place just before Hadjar broke for the pits. Max stopped again for more hard-compound Pirellis at the end of lap 48 and he emerged behind Lawson again – but this time he was unable to make a pass stick and crossed the finishing line ninth on the road. 

Verstappen said on Saturday, after qualifying, that there was something fundamentally wrong with the RB21. But Marko claimed it was a tyre issue – or, more specifically, the mechanical and aerodynamic configuration of the car not working to bring the Pirellis into their optimum temperature ‘window’. 

Both Verstappen and Tsunoda had complained throughout the weekend of lack of grip. 

“The tyres didn’t work,” said Marko. “I say it’s only here, and I don’t think it will happen again, if what we believe was the reason.” 

When this contention was put to Verstappen himself, he was rather more sceptical. 

“I don’t know yet,” he said. “It’s a bit easy to say that, but we’ll have a look.” 

Photos from Hungarian GP – Race