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Red Bull’s troubled 2024 Formula 1 season hit a new low in qualifying for the Italian Grand Prix, with Max Verstappen describing the car as "not driveable anymore" in Q3 after managing only the seventh-fastest time at Monza.
Verstappen went as far as to write off his victory chances, saying "no we're not" when asked if Red Bull could be in the fight for victory.
A confluence of factors led to Red Bull being seven tenths of a second slower than pacesetter Lando Norris's McLaren, but fundamental to the deficit are the ongoing troubles to achieve a consistent, predictable balance.
Although Red Bull never looked like the pacesetter during practice, either on short- or long-run pace, it was at least in the mix at the front there, so the eventual gap was larger than expected. Verstappen set the second-fastest time in Q2 on used softs, lapping 0.026 seconds slower than Lewis Hamilton, but couldn't replicate that in the final stage of qualifying with fresh tyres.
"For whatever reason in Q3, I picked up a lot of understeer on both tyre sets and this is something that I don't understand at the moment," said Verstappen. "It was just not driveable anymore, so that's something that is very weird. Going four tenths slower than you did in Q2 is not normal."
Understeer wasn't the only problem. A moment in the entry to Alboreto (previously Parabolica) compromised his first Q3 lap, then Sergio Perez’s Lesmo 2 moment showered the track with gravel ahead of Verstappen and cost him significant time on the second run. Perez suffered from similar troubles, but as usual struggled slightly more than Verstappen - even though ultimately he ended up only one place and 0.04s behind.
"The disconnection in the balance we are currently facing is the main issue," said Perez. "We can get some competitive laps at times, but it's very difficult to have any progression. Not having a Monza [specific] rear wing as well has hurt us, probably more than we thought in the beginning.
"And also something with the tyres. I go quicker with the scrubbed tyre, I put the new tyre [on] and everything feels a lot weaker: higher grip but I cannot get there. So, a few things that explain the deficit that we currently have to the front. Hopefully tomorrow the car can be a little bit more connected - you're not pushing as much the [corner] entries, so hopefully that brings us back and we can have a stronger race pace. But it’s going to be really hard to overtake."
That speaks to the fact that as Red Bull has been pushed harder and harder, so it is running into more and more limitations with the car. Last year, not having a Monza-specific rear wing wouldn't have been a problem as it had time in hand, ride heights could be compromised without losing the overall advantage, and the car didn't always have to be driven so hard.
Most of its areas of advantage have been eroded, even at Monza where the car's strong aero efficiency should have been a potent weapon. The difficulties with extracting the grip on fresh rubber also suggests that tyre prep was a problem on the newly resurfaced track.
"The whole weekend already we were too slow," said Verstappen. "The long runs might look good on paper, but it didn't feel like that personally.
"The problem is when you don't have a balanced car, of course in the race that's quite painful also on the tyres. Maybe with the other cars, it might be a little better for the race, but we're also starting at the back of the top group so we'll have to wait and see what happens in front of us. A few unknowns with the graining as well. We'll find out tomorrow."
And Sunday is the concern. Were the race to finish based on qualifying positions, Red Bull's constructors' championship lead of 30 points would be wiped out. It would also mean Norris taking 19 points out of Verstappen's drivers' championship lead to cut it to 51 (subject to where the fastest lap bonus goes).
Perez describes Red Bull's problems as "very similar when we were in Zandvoort", at a track that's dramatically different.
Before the August break, the advantage was still swinging back and forth between Red Bull and McLaren, with occasional intervention from Mercedes and Ferrari, but now McLaren has taken a decisive step forward and even if Red Bull executes perfectly, there's a danger it’s now not quick enough regardless of the track.
With Baku and Singapore coming up next, that's a big worry. Team principal Christian Horner admitted as much, saying "as a team, we are concerned by our form, but more than that it is confusing".
Perez summarised it best. Red Bull has carried these limitations for some time, but as rivals have become stronger it has hit these problems harder. Both Verstappen and Perez have long since recognised the problems, which raises questions about how easy it will be for Red Bull to fix it. Now, without a proper fix this season, certainly the constructors' championship and perhaps even the drivers' title will slip away.
"They have been with me since a long time," said Perez of the car problems. "They seem to be hurting me more earlier in the year than they did to Max. Now, they seem to be coming also to Max. It's something we don't have a quick fix for now, but hopefully in the short-term we are able to dial in some connection to the car and then the pace will be a lot better."
Perez also described the lack of responsiveness of the car as meaning "you're in a boat", a revealing - and damning - criticism of a racing car. In that regard, the specifics of Saturday's troubles are just one manifestation of a broad problem, rather than a track-specific one.
Red Bull recognises what's going wrong, but whether it can fix it is dependent on really understanding exactly why it's happening and then how to correct it.
"It's just weird that it suddenly happened," said Verstappen of the sudden-onset understeer. "Q1, Q2 wasn't that good. Our car is extremely tricky to drive from entry to mid-corner, massive balance shift at the moment. So if you fix one thing, it creates another so we have to be quite careful with that."
