Dr Helmut Marko denies the theory that Max Verstappen deliberately slowed down at Zandvoort to alert the Red Bull factory.
On the face of it, Lando Norris simply outclassed the entire field at the Dutch GP, winning by a whopping margin of almost 23 seconds over once-dominant Red Bull.
After the chequered flag, Max’s father Jos reopened his line of attack against team boss Christian Horner, calling the gap “more than 20 seconds of huge disappointment” and insisting on the fact “It’s time for Red Bull to look in the mirror and take action.”
“Good people are leaving the team. I’m very unhappy with what’s happening because Max can’t be happy with a car like this. Now it’s up to Horner to get the team back on track. I’ll be surprised if he does.”
As for the theory that Verstappen deliberately drove slowly at Zandvoort, it was first put forward by former F1 driver Martin Brundle, who works for Sky UK.
“He knew he couldn’t beat Lando and by slowing down a little bit like that, it’s going to give the factory a boost, right? I’m pretty sure of that.”
Marko refuted this claim.
“Martin Brundle’s assumption that Max was deliberately driving slowly is incorrect. You can’t say that.”
“When he saw that Lando was so fast, he stopped taking risks. But the difference with (Sergio) Perez was simply that he was driving with a different set-up. We thought that with more downforce, Max would slide less.”
“But that just made it vulnerable at top speed, and the tire wear was still high.”
Horner suggested this week that McLaren in particular, but also Mercedes, have recently accelerated thanks to an innovative front wing design philosophy (read here).
Marko, however, is not so sure.
“Norris’ fastest lap without DRS right at the end shows how superior Lando was. It means a lot of work and a lot of thinking for us. But it’s not so much about just finding new parts. We need to get back the predictability of the car we had at the start of the season. It’s not about the set-up, it’s more that something happened with the new parts that turned the balance in a negative way.”
Red Bull’s considerable lead over the field at the start of the year has now disappeared, and McLaren are struggling to regain the championship lead. The gap between the two teams in the constructors’ championship is now just 30 points with nine rounds remaining, forcing Marko to acknowledge that Red Bull’s chances of retaining the title are in jeopardy.
“If it continues like this, the world championship is in danger. But we think that on the one hand it was a circuit with an ideal layout for McLaren. On the other hand, the temperatures were also low, so everything went well for them.”
“But it is quite clear that we have to rebalance the car, that our updates have to have an effect, that they have to bring something not only in theory, but also on the stopwatch.”
“But we have a strong team and that’s why I’m confident that something will come out of it.”
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