'It Was Our Fault': Red Bull Takes Blame For Verstappen's Race In Hungary

Monday, 22 July 2024 at 11:30

Helmut Marko suggested Red Bull was to blame for Max Verstappen's poor result at the 2024 Hungarian Grand Prix.

Red Bull's F1 driver, Max Verstappen, finished the 13th round of the 2024 season at Hungaroring in P5 despite having a much better pace than the two drivers in front of him.

After starting from P3, the Dutchman wanted and thought he could perhaps attack the two McLaren drivers in front. However, his team then let Lewis Hamilton undercut him, which was a crucial mistake.

But why did Red Bull let the seven-time World Champion on Mercedes undercut Verstappen when it seemed so obvious from the outside this could happen?

Red Bull's advisor, Helmut Marko, explained after the race that the team's calculations suggested it should have been much easier for Verstappen to overtake the 39-year-old, so the undercut initially wasn't a worry for them. He said, as per Motorsport-Total:

"It's clear that it was our fault. All the simulations gave a different delta for the overtaking maneuver, and our mistake was that we misjudged it so badly."

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"We thought that we would be faster with new tires. But we simply couldn't get past Hamilton."

Hungaroring has a pretty long start/finish straight, which misled many into believing it would be much easier to overtake than it actually was.

Although the triple World Champion was faster than Hamilton, he always came at the start/finish straight at least 0,5 seconds behind the Mercedes driver, which wasn't enough to perform the overtake by the end of it.

Verstappen was also very frustrated by how the race developed, communication with his team, strategy calls, how his car was handled, and the stewards' decisions, which led him to drive a bit too aggressively and, in the end, cost him the P3 (which he, perhaps, still could have had).

Nevertheless, Marko suggested the team was fully to blame for underestimating how tough overtaking would be at the circuit in Hungary. He said, according to GPBlog:

"We completely underestimated how difficult overtaking is here. We thought our speed advantage would be enough, but we couldn't overtake. That's why our strategy was wrong."