Max Verstappen’s frustrated radio messages show the growing pressure at Red Bull
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Max Verstappen’s frustration grew during the Hungarian Grand Prix and was heard by the whole world on team radio.
Verstappen’s struggles and response to those struggles, far removed from the dominance of 2023 and the start of this season, pointed to potential cracks within a team that once seemed untouchable.
Verstappen sounded irritated at the start after Red Bull told him to give a position back to Lando Norris. An incident on the first lap saw the Dutchman go off track at Turn 1 and gain an advantage as he and the McLarens ran three wide.
“Then you can tell the FIA that we are going to race like this from now on,” the Dutchman said on the radio. “Just driving people off the road.”
The radio reports became more vehement as the race progressed, sometimes with verbal abuse. Competitors undermined Verstappen at both pit stops after he had been off the track for several laps. He said after the race: “The wrong strategy put me behind, so I was constantly fighting people, trying to overtake, but it didn’t work.” The car, equipped with a major upgrade package, did not feel optimal. Verstappen spent much of the race behind Lewis Hamilton and fighting for the final podium spot.
It ended with the RB20 flying through the air when Verstappen hit Hamilton’s right front wheel with seven laps to go. The driver’s car suffered some damage and Verstappen complained that Hamilton might move under braking. But race engineer Gianpiero Lambiase suppressed Verstappen’s radio rage.
VERSTAPPEN 💥 HAMILTON
A hard blow that sent the Red Bull into the air and ultimately ended the battle for P3 🥉#F1 #HungarianGP photo.twitter.com/I7K2Nu5sgG
— Formula 1 (@F1) July 21, 2024
“I’m not even going to get into a radio fight with the other teams, Max. We let the stewards do their thing,” Lambiase said. “It’s childish on the radio. Childish.” (Red Bull team boss Christian Horner felt Lambiase’s message was about other teams, not the Dutchman.)
It all resulted in Verstappen finishing fifth, his second-worst result this year in races he has completed. Combined with Sergio Perez’s seventh place, Red Bull walked away with just 16 points. A world away from the mega-hauls driven by Verstappen victories that were once the norm.
Red Bull may have started the 2024 season as the dominant team and look set to continue their reign. Verstappen is driving at a very high level and the pit stops have generally been cleanly executed. But the car is a different story, with others on the grid, such as McLaren, quickly catching up with the Milton Keynes-based team. And on a weekend where Red Bull was not the fastest, rare strategic lapses could have cost them a potential podium finish.
“I knew it was going to be a tough race, and beating McLaren was going to be tough,” Verstappen said. “But then you need to at least get a P3 across the finish line, and even that was tough.”
Some experts criticized Verstappen’s radio messages.
It is not the first time that his radio conversations with Lambiase have been a topic of conversation. The two bickered during the 2023 Belgian GP, but there was no underlying tension. Verstappen’s frustration, however, was clearly visible during the Hungarian GP last weekend.
At one point, Verstappen touched on a source of his frustration, saying over the team radio: “It’s pretty impressive how we managed to get undercut. It totally f—ed my race.” He had been undercut twice by the time the race ended. During the first round of pit stops, the Red Bull driver got stuck in the foul air as Hamilton’s tires began to sink and lost a place. During the second round of stops, Verstappen lost a place to Charles Leclerc.
Dirty air can slow a car down as it negatively affects the aerodynamic performance of the car behind it and reduces downforce. It didn’t help that Verstappen’s car wasn’t as quick compared to the competition as it was earlier this season or last year.
Verstappen and race engineer Lambiase often bicker on the radio, but their exchanges in Hungary were more testy than usual. (Mark Thompson/Getty Images)
Later in the race, Lambiase suggested that Verstappen was pushing too hard on a new set of tyres, saying: “Well, that’s a soft introduction.” Verstappen hit out: “No mate, don’t come with that s— now. You gave me this s— strategy, okay? I’m trying to save what’s left.”
These radio moments happen in the heat of the moment and only parts are broadcast. Verstappen dismissed the idea that his radio messages were worse than usual, saying: “No, I don’t agree with that. But I was just irritated about (Sunday) and maybe the team didn’t realise at the time what they were doing wrong, or maybe they didn’t see that it was that serious. But in the car you have a lot of different feelings.”
Verstappen and Lambiase have worked together for eight years and are known for their blunt communication style. But some critics may have felt that Verstappen was disrespecting his team. When the suggestion was put to him in the media, Verstappen said of those critics: “They can all go to hell.”
Sky Sports asked the Dutchman about the reports and whether he should apologise, but he dismissed the idea. “I don’t think we need to apologise. I just think we need to do better. I don’t understand why people think you can’t talk on the radio. This is a sport. If some people don’t like that, stay home.”
Some pundits have suggested that Verstappen’s frustrations during the race may have been due to his sim racing. The night before the Grand Prix, he raced until 3am, but that’s not new. The Red Bull driver has won races on weekends where he sim raced before, such as at Imola.
“I think people jump to conclusions, but Max knows what it takes and we trust his judgement on that,” Horner said. “He knows what it takes to drive a Grand Prix car and win Grand Prix and become world champion. And look, as a team, we always work as a team and any discussions about how we can improve will not always happen through the media.”
But what’s different now is that Red Bull is no longer the fastest team. Since Imola, four other drivers have won races, while Verstappen has taken two victories (Canada and Spain). This season is the first since his title fight with Hamilton in 2021 that Verstappen has felt legitimate pressure. Ferrari challenged in early 2022 before Red Bull and Verstappen took the titles. In this race last year, he took his seventh straight victory (by 33 seconds) and extended the team’s then-impeccable record.
But this year’s Hungarian GP marks the first time since 2021 that Verstappen has gone three races without a win.
“With stable regulations, margins increasing — you’re on a curve where the profits are harder and harder to find,” Horner said. “That’s normal. That’s the normal cycle. I’ve been in this business 20 years; that’s what happens. It doesn’t mean you accept it. It means you just have to work harder to find the incremental profits and run good races and be at the top of your game.
“We know we have to improve in the second half of the year.”
On a weekend where Red Bull were not the fastest, rare strategic errors might have cost Verstappen a podium finish. (Beata Zawrzel/NurPhoto via Getty Images)
On Saturday, Verstappen tapped his steering wheel as he crossed the finish line in Q3. His lap time earned him P3 and was 0.046 seconds slower than Lando Norris’ pole position time. When asked about his reaction, he said: “I can’t be frustrated, can I? Yeah, that’s what happened.”
Red Bull lacked the pace to claim they had the fastest car. While the rest of the grid closed the gap, McLaren became the biggest threat. Through the first six races of the year, Red Bull built up a 115-point gap to the Woking-based team. After McLaren’s 1-2 finish in Hungary, that gap was reduced to 51 points.
Red Bull brought a set of upgrades to Hungary, which Verstappen described as “something bigger than what we’ve brought before”, adding that “this is an important weekend for everyone.” The Hungarian GP marked the penultimate race before the summer break, which includes a two-week shutdown. For 14 days, teams are not allowed to work on car production or design.
Verstappen agreed that this round of upgrades was crucial for Red Bull’s immediate future. “If this doesn’t give us a good lap time, I don’t know how the rest of the season will develop. But at the same time, I don’t know what the other teams are going to do. We’re just focusing on ourselves. We’re bringing quite a few things to the car and I hope that will give us quite a few lap times.”
But as the weekend progressed, McLaren held on to Verstappen and third place looked the best it could do. Strategy issues aside, Red Bull will look at the data collected over the weekend to see where it needs to optimise the car. Horner said the car will be “yet another specification” this weekend at Spa. Did the upgrades in Hungary fail to deliver?
“We need to extend that operational window for the car so that when the car is in the right window, it qualifies for pole by four-tenths in Austria, and then (in Hungary) we missed pole by less than a tenth,” Horner said. “But you can see when you listen to the driver, especially Max, he has limitations in the car that he knows are performance, the trick is how you translate those problems into solutions, technically and aerodynamically.”
Upgrades take time and Hungary and Spa are two different types of circuits. “We have to work on it. I mean, it’s not like we can suddenly have new upgrades on the car next week. So yes, it is a problem,” Verstappen told F1TV. He added that they have to improve the package, but now, “I think we are behind in terms of race pace and qualifying pace.”
There is a title fight going on in Formula 1, and there is little room for error. As Horner puts it, Red Bull had a “unicorn year” in 2023. But now it is under pressure to operate at its usual high level.
Additional reporting by Luke Smith
(Main photo of Max Verstappen: Bryn Lennon/Getty Images, Charniaux/XPB Images/action press/Sipa USA)
