Max Verstappen expects his Red Bull team to be more competitive in Barcelona than in recent races – but he stresses that it won’t be an easy weekend for the Milton Keynes team.
After dominating the early part of the 2024 season, RBR and Verstappen had a difficult Monaco weekend. They also enjoyed a less than optimum performance in Montreal, although the Dutchman ultimately won the race.
However, as the championship returns to a “traditional” track with high-speed corners, the RB20 is widely expected to be the car to beat once again, although Verstappen remains cautious.
“I don’t think, of course, it will be like the beginning of the season,” he said when asked if he expected to regain his early season form.
“But we know that normally this is a track that our car should suit a bit more, and we’re excited, of course.
“I’m aware that everyone has been catching up a lot, so everyone, I think, is quite confident. But if you compare this to the last few races that we have done, this should be a better track.”
Verstappen anticipates rivals will remain a threat
Asked if his recent struggles were down to setup on a given weekend, Verstappen said that there was a bigger picture.
“Not only setup, we had a few other issues as well around that prevented us from having a clean weekend,” he said.
“I think the last few tracks that we went to, bumps and kerbs, you know that our car doesn’t like that so much. So hopefully [here] it will be a little bit more, let’s say, straightforward.
“But I don’t expect, let’s say, an easy weekend because I think McLaren, for example, they’ve been quick everywhere, and I feel like they’re going to be quick here as well.
“And with Mercedes and Ferrari, they seem like lately they have also really made some good steps forward.
“So for sure, when you can be quick in Monaco and Montreal when you don’t have any kind of issues with kerbs anyway, and you still have quite good performance in high-speed, then you should also be quite decent here.”
Verstappen said that it was important to get the balance right in order to optimise the weekend.
“People are constantly improving,” he said. “And sometimes you just have a better weekend than others with the way you set up the car.
“Because at the end of the day, you can bring upgrades. But if you don’t put the right setup on the car, I mean, looking at F2, same car, but there’s still a big difference in teams and operation.
“So also there you can make mistakes. And yeah, that’s what we need to get right. Like I said, naturally, this car should suit the track a bit better. But still, we need to make sure that it’s in the right balance window.”
He added: “We just had a bit of different kind of little issues every time on Friday that then made it a bit harder. We made it a bit harder for ourselves. So we just need to try and have a clean start to the weekend. I think that will already help a lot.
“So yeah, we are fully on top of that. I mean, this is something that sometimes seems a bit hard to control. We’ll try again this weekend to have a clean weekend.”
Verstappen urges Red Bull to keep perspective
While Barcelona is always regarded as a litmus test for the remainder of the season Verstappen stressed that there was no need for the team to panic if it has a tricky weekend.
“We always want to do well, and we also know that other people are pushing flat out, so we just need to have a good weekend like we always want to have it.
“Let’s say it doesn’t go to plan, and it’s not man overboard, right? I mean, we just keep working, and keep trying to be better. There’s still so many races where you could score a good amount of points. But of course, here we want to do well.”
Verstappen also had an interesting take on how rivals have caught Red Bull by understanding how the pacesetting car worked.
“I think it’s more that these regulations, they don’t really offer many different directions,” he said.
“With the older spec cars, like ’21 regulations, there was a lot more that you could do. And here, I think it’s almost like you reach like a kind of a ceiling, a bit easier than the other cars.
“Some people are quite good at analysing everything that we do. Sometimes, you see some similar things. But I would do the same, if I would be behind, you look at the best team and you try to learn from what they do.”