Emag wrote: ↑31 Aug 2024, 14:06
This is exactly what feeds into the "conspiracies".
You can attribute part of the loss in competitiveness due to the failed development plan, but it's difficult to explain why the car's balance is just so horrible, even when they tried early-season spec at Zandvoort. This car was on another level at the beginning of the season. With the exception of Austrlia, no car seemed to be anywhere near it in terms of drivability and overall pace. Now not only are they quite a bit slower, from a relative point of view, but the car visibly drives bad. You can just see how much lock Max has to put in for the lesmos, the understeer is just atrocious.
The RB20 was never born well. It's a failed concept. There was no potential in the direction that they tried to go in. The other teams couldn't capitalize at the beginning of the year. Mclaren's real MCL38 was 5 races late. Mercedes and Ferrari were catching up from being months behind the development curve since 2022.
Just because they were winning doesn't mean the car didn't have problems. Many of us already picked up on the inferior tire degradation and the tire overheating since Bahrain.
They were simply never pushed so Max had margin to drive around the problems. Now that they need to actually maximize every aspect of the race track, the car isn't good enough to do so. The other teams had successful updates and Red Bull didn't. That means Red Bull was standing still, and when you stand still in F1 you go backwards. Mclaren had another succesful update last time out. Ferrari brought their biggest update of the year to Monza. Now both of them are clearly ahead of Red Bull. When other teams have succesful updates, and you do not, you fall behind. It doesn't matter where Red Bull was at the beginning of the season because the other cars are faster than the launch spec RB20.
Jos Verstappen talked about this a few days ago:
Red Bull Racing didn't believe Verstappen
Max sensed at the start of the season that the car was not quite right, the former F1 driver reveals. ''At the beginning of the season where you then win races, then of course it all feels right, but he also said then that the balance is not right. Of course, that was not brought out at the time. They then try to keep that inside. He complained about the balance there too. Max actually complained about it about three months ago. Only they didn't really believe it, or they didn't really see it. Now you're actually a bit too late,'' Jos said.
https://www.gpblog.com/en/news/297747/j ... ieved.html
The braking problem was there since last year in Monza. Perez struggled to pass the Ferraris and kept braking so early in the brake zones.
A lion must kill its prey.