Max Verstappen thinks that the RB20’s one-lap speed is still a significant drawback. On Friday, the Dutchman won pole position by a margin of 0.2 seconds over qualifying expert Charles Leclerc; nevertheless, his teammate Sergio Perez could only finish fifth fastest at the end of the session.
This characteristic is nothing new for Red Bull in the ground effect era. Despite winning a staggering 21 of the 22 Grands Prix on offer in 2023, the team only claimed 14 of the 22 pole positions with Ferrari beating the reigning champions on seven occasions and Lewis Hamilton getting in on the action at the Hungaroring.
Discussing the issues facing the RB20 in the aftermath of the Bahrain Grand Prix, Verstappen said: “I do think that we are just not that great on one-lap performance for whatever reason with the car. But luckily it’s very good in the race for most tracks.
“Naturally, of course, you focus a little bit more on the race, but yeah, it just seems like other teams can maybe extract a little bit more over one lap than us for whatever reason. So that’s what we’ll look at for the coming races.
But yeah, I really think that also just… The circumstances today [the race] with the wind helped us out a bit more compared to the last two days. So probably it was not in our favour with how the car is responding at the moment.”
