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Max Verstappen believes the Imola GP weekend will not be as straightforward as expected with the weather forecast and track changes. Speaking to media including Sportskeeda ahead of the weekend, the Dutchman felt it was difficult to make any predictions ahead of the race.
Red Bull upgraded their car with a new floor in Japan and are expected to bring another set of upgrades in Imola. With Miami being a sprint weekend with different weather conditions, it was difficult to predict the pecking order of the grid or gauge the progress made by McLaren. McLaren had heavily upgraded their car in Miami and were the fastest car all weekend.
Despite the Imola weekend featuring the regular format and the circuit being more conventional, Max Verstappen disagreed that the weekend would be a straightforward one.
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FIA has removed some of the sausage kerbs from the circuit which could make the circuit more high-speed. The Dutchman felt that removing the kerbs made it difficult to prejudge the straightforwardness of the weekend.
However, Verstappen believes that Imola could be a better race to understand where McLaren are in terms of their upgrades. He felt the hot weather in Miami made it a difficult track to analyze performance.
Asked by Sportskeeda what his expectations were upon returning to a conventional weekend in Imola, Max Verstappen replied:
“I don’t think necessarily it's a more straightforward weekend. I mean it's quite a complicated track, a lot of high speed corners, kerbing, they took a few sausages away. Need to see how it will evolve the way you drive around here. And the weather as well, it's not going to be a straight forward weekend. So still a lot of things we have to get right.”
Asked where they are in the pecking order after Miami, he said:
“Yeah I don’t know, because McLaren of course came with a really big upgrade. I guess we will only find out here how good that upgrade is going to be because it takes a bit of time to fully get on top of things. But we knew that it's about the little details that can make quite a big difference in terms of lap time sometimes. And I think especially in terms of a track like Miami, everything is very sensitive, it's very hot and a bit too much sliding here and there can make you lose quite a bit of lap time.”
Max Verstappen downplayed the potential of Red Bull upgrades
Max Verstappen was uncertain about the performance gains of the Red Bull upgrades which will be introduced on the RB20 in Imola. With Ferrari bringing an aggressive upgrade to their car this weekend, he felt that it was difficult to gauge the potential of their car and determine their place in the pecking order. McLaren’s upgrades in Miami also reflected that they had made significant potential gains.
Speaking of Red Bull's upgrades, the Dutchman claimed it was difficult to know their place in the pecking order following the upgrades. He felt that their upgrades were not necessarily in response to rival teams' upgrades but a course of direction planned by the team in advance.
Asked by Sportskeeda what he expected from the upgrades on the RB20 in Imola, Max Verstappen said:
“I mean there are a lot of people coming with upgrades, you know. I saw Ferrari for example, they are coming with a big big upgrade, so at the moment it's very difficult to know where we are gonna be.”
Asked if the upgrades were a necessary response to Ferrari and McLaren bringing them, he said:
“I mean it's not responding. These things are always planned out for a long time. It's not like one team comes with upgrades and we are like ‘oh we need to put something together’. It's literally already in the pipeline. We are happy with it but of course naturally, we have to keep on pushing. Because teams behind us, they are definitely catching up, as you could see in Miami that when we don’t get things 100 percent right, they’re ahead. And we have to try and make sure that we don’t have too many of those weekends.”
In terms of the gap closing down, Max Verstappen was skeptical about predicting a pecking order saying:
“I don’t know, I mean people are coming with upgrades, we are coming with upgrades. So at the moment, it's quite unknown.”
Red Bull’s upgrade in Imola could give them a significant edge or could cost them fractions of performance. Prior to the Chinese GP, Adrian Newey had suggested that they were struggling to find performance gains with the RB20 and that the car could plateau in terms of performance, with their rivals catching up. However, Max Verstappen disagreed and felt there was more performance to extract from the car.
After the Miami GP performance, Red Bull can expect to be closely challenged by their rivals as the season progresses. After six races, Max Verstappen leads the driver's championship with a lead of 33 points and has a total tally of 136 points.
