Max Verstappen didn’t feel any damage to the car after the race in Miami, but Red Bull says it was really there and also cost him a huge amount of time
How much performance did the damaged underbody really cost Max Verstappen? The Dutchman had finished second behind Lando Norris in Sunday’s Formula 1 race in Miami, but had nothing more to offer the McLaren in the closing stages, although he was able to pull away from the field at the start
Everything changed on lap 21, when Verstappen cut the chicane and took the bollard with him, which was then lying on the track. “I didn’t like it, so I decided to remove it and test the durability of the front wing,” joked Verstappen afterwards about the incident.
According to team boss Christian Horner, Verstappen is said to have damaged the underbody during the trip over the kerb: “He cleared the bollard around lap 20 and severely damaged the underside of the car, so we need to look at exactly what effect that had,” he says.
A “good chunk” of the underbody is said to have been missing in the left rear area, “and you can see that it’s moving quite a bit,” says Horner. Conclusion: “That certainly didn’t help.”
Verstappen did not want to know about any damage in the post-race press conference: “There was no damage,” he said, but when asked directly about Horner’s comments on damage, the Dutchman thought again.
“It didn’t feel any different, so I don’t know. Maybe it was damaged before, I don’t know. I mean, I hit the thing and after that my pace was the same, so I don’t know if there was any damage. “
Verstappen finds damage after all
The three-time world champion blames his lack of pace on the set-up and tires because he didn’t feel particularly comfortable in the car all weekend. “It was okay on the medium, but it was a disaster on the hard,” he says.
“I simply had little grip and the balance was quite difficult at low speed. I couldn’t really rely on the rear axle, while I had enormous understeer at high speed,” he explains. “And when you have those two problems, you can’t balance it because you’re chasing two different things. “
Red Bull explained afterwards that Verstappen’s statements were made before he had seen the car, where damage was quite obviously noticeable: “When you see pictures of what was missing: it wasn’t designed like that,” Horner emphasized.
Verstappen was quoted in the press release after the race with a statement about the damage: “When we brought the car back to the garage, we also noticed that the underbody was damaged and had a hole in it, which could have been caused by me hitting the bollard. “
No information about lap times
It is difficult to say from the outside how much performance this really cost, as the times set by Verstappen do not provide any information. On the lap after the incident, the Dutchman clocked 1:32.906 minutes, which is exactly in line with the five previous laps, which were all between 1:32.530 and 1:33.022 minutes.
No further comparisons can be made, as the Red Bull driver came in for his pit stop on lap 23 and put on the hard tires with which he had the aforementioned problems.
However, Horner continues to claim that damage was the cause: “He lost two and a half tenths every lap in the first corner alone,” he says.
Whether Verstappen would have had the pace against the fast McLaren even without the damage can no longer be answered in any case
