Red Bull are considering making “drastic” changes to the RB21 that could potentially end Max Verstappen’s title chances at the Sao Paulo Grand Prix.
It has been a frustrating week for the four-time world champion, who is trying to close the gap in this season’s hotly contested title race with McLaren front-runners Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri.
Coming into the race in Brazil, Norris holds the world championship lead for the first time in months. Verstappen, meanwhile, has reduced the gap of late with a number of impressive showings.
However, things are looking bleak for the defending champion. He qualified 16th for Sunday’s main race after finishing fourth in the sprint, which extended Norris’ lead over Verstappen to 39 points.
Speaking at the media area after the session, Verstappen said: “It’s not what you want to see. This is a bit unexpected, after changing quite a bit on the car. It was not responding, I had no grip, I really had to underdrive it basically.”
It has been a tricky couple of days in Brazil for Red Bull and Max Verstappen. Image credit: Getty
It has since emerged that Red Bull senior advisor Helmut Marko has called a team meeting to determine the best course of action.
Max Verstappen faces potentially title-ending blow at Brazilian GP
Red Bull must now decide whether to continue as planned or overhaul the RB21 ahead of Sunday’s race. If they go ahead with the latter, then parc ferme regulations would be breached, meaning Verstappen would start from the pit lane.
Of course, that would be a huge blow to his chances in the title race.
Marko gave an insight into Red Bull’s thinking after qualifying. “We now have to see what we are going to do about this situation,” he told ORF. “Whether, for example, we are going to make drastic changes again.”
He added: “That would mean we would have to start from the pit-lane. But before we do that, we need to sit down together and calmly consider what the best option is.”
Red Bull are ‘tearing their hair out’ in bewilderment after they were caught ‘completely off guard’ in Brazil, according to German publication AMuS.
“No matter what the engineers tried, nothing could get the car up to speed,” the report added. “After the double elimination in Q1, both cars will likely start from the pit lane with a modified setup.”
Verstappen’s title chances may be over. Image credit: Getty
Red Bull team principal Laurent Mekies admitted that the changes made to Verstappen’s car between the sprint and qualifying “went in the opposite direction” and contributed to his early Q1 exit.
“Today has not been a positive day for the Team, but one we will try and learn from,” Mekies said in Sao Paulo. “The Sprint was tough and we did not have the pace to fight for the win
“We were not happy with where we were after the Sprint, so we decided to make a number of changes. It is part of the risk taking we felt was necessary to see if we could get more out of the car.
“It didn’t work and if anything, it went in the opposite direction and clearly, we lost a lot of competitiveness. It is painful and difficult to accept but it is what happens when you take risks sometimes and the best we can do is to learn from it and see where we can improve the car from here.”
Last year, Verstappen climbed up from 17th on the grid to win the Sao Paulo Grand Prix, but even for him, this could prove an almost impossible task.
