Max Verstappen says he doesn’t have the pace to fight for more than fifth place at the Mexico City Grand Prix and needs to stay out of trouble in Sunday’s race.
Red Bull went into the Mexican weekend in good form, with Verstappen winning three of the previous four races, as well as the COTA Sprint, and finishing second behind George Russell in Singapore. However, Friday’s strong one-lap pace underpinned poor fuel efficiency, and Verstappen said after qualifying fifth that the team had not resolved the issue.
“I don’t have anything more to say. It was just very difficult,” Verstappen said. “We tried a lot of things and it wasn’t for lack of trying, but it wasn’t great, I would say that.
“I don’t know (the cause). There’s just no grip, no turning… no traction, slipping…”
“We weren’t good here last year. I mean, people always think, ‘Oh, we’ve won here five times, so we need to be good here,’ but we weren’t good last year either, and the years before that probably had a big advantage of not really suffering. And we’re definitely not good right now.”
Given the momentum he has built recently in the title race, Verstappen knows how costly it would be to lose significant points to McLaren, and believes he cannot realistically pursue an off-the-line win given his long-run performance.
“It doesn’t matter what I do in Turn 1 because I don’t have the pace. Even if I jump two cars, it will keep me in the race,” he said. “I need to stay out of trouble and run my own race, but in the long run every lap was weak compared to the car in front of me, so I’ll just try to chase and see what I can do.”
“Tomorrow I’ll figure it out myself. If I get a chance, I’ll take it, but I’m purely concerned about pace, which wasn’t good this weekend.”
Team principal Laurent Mequise believes Red Bull has not been able to get the car into its best performance window, but that any potential race pace improvements could only be seen on Sunday.
“It’s fair to say we haven’t been able to put the car in the sweet spot so far this weekend,” Mekies told F1 TV. “Certainly with Max, you heard him say it very vocally since yesterday and we tried a lot of things but we couldn’t quite find a way to give him a car that he could push. At this kind of level of competition, the moment it falls out the window, that’s the price you pay quickly. It’s part of the game – we learn, and it’s still a very long race tomorrow.”
“Throughout the night we paid a lot of attention to whether we could improve our race pace. Whether this gave us a little more exposure in the short term is hard to say at this point. I think the real answer will be after the race.”
“Lando looks really, really fast. The Ferraris are looking really fast this weekend too, but it’s still a very long race. It’s a hot race. Everyone is at their limits with cooling the cars and cooling the brakes, so a lot can still happen. We have all the competitors around us, so I’m sure it won’t be a boring race.”
