Red Bull Racing had a disappointing first day at the Las Vegas Grand Prix, finishing nowhere near the top of the timesheets. Max Verstappen’s dreams of winning a fourth consecutive drivers’ world championship in the Las Vegas Grand Prix this weekend were dashed on Friday when Red Bull announced they had brought the incorrect rear wing. Verstappen was fifth fastest in the first hour of practice, just over a second behind.
The Dutch driver dropped to 17th and more than two seconds behind in the second session. That was largely explained by Red Bull Racing’s unorthodox program, which saw it start Free Practice 2 on soft tyres before running the majority of the day on mediums. As a result, it did not bank a meaningful qualifying simulation, pushing Verstappen and Sergio Perez down the order.
However, according to Dr. Helmut Marko, Red Bull’s motorsport advisor, the choice of rear wing is also an important issue. Max Verstappen leads McLaren’s Lando Norris by 62 points with three races remaining. He only needs to finish ahead of him in Las Vegas to become the sixth driver to win four world championships. With three races remaining in the season, no other driver has a mathematical chance of winning the championship.
Red Bull losing its edge at crucial moments
And the constructors championship is a three-way tie, with McLaren leading Ferrari by 36 points and Red Bull trailing by 13 points. McLaren is hoping to win its first constructors championship since 1998. After Finnish driver Mika Häkkinen won the driver’s championship with the new papaya-colored squad. Ferrari, which has won the most championships (16), hasn’t returned the trophy to Maranello since 2008.
Verstappen told reporters in Las Vegas it looks a bit better now in the championship. But we’ll see this weekend. We have good hopes to be competitive, but I don’t know, of course, how competitive. The issue for us is tyre-related as we have no grip and it feels like driving on ice. We struggled to make the tyres work.
