Max Verstappen has revealed his Red Bull team found a hole in his car’s floor at the end of the Miami Grand Prix.
The Red Bull driver initially believed he had not damaged his car when he went off at turn 14 on lap 21. Verstappen hit a bollard, which passed over the top of his car, and went across the kerbs at the tight chicane.“When we took the car back to the garage, we also found that the floor was damaged and had a hole in which could have been picked up from hitting the cone,” said Verstappen after the race.
Verstappen led the race until that point, then gave up the lead when he pitted following the Virtual Safety Car period which was triggered so the bollard could be retrieved. Lando Norris took the lead during a later Safety Car period.
Over the final laps Verstappen found his car wasn’t quick enough to attack the McLaren. While Norris had been slightly quicker when the pair were on new medium compound tyres early in the race, the McLaren driver pulled away by 7.6 seconds over the final 25 laps on hard rubber.
Verstappen’s second place was the first time this year he has failed to win a race he has finished. “Ultimately today we were not quick enough,” he said. “The Safety Car did not help us but we still had plenty of opportunities to win the race and unfortunately we lacked pace.”
“We also struggled with the tyres and balance of the car all weekend and I never felt too comfortable in the car. In the high speed I was understeering and we also struggled a lot with the grip with the tyres.
“It wasn’t our best weekend and it really shows that everything needs to work well to win races and it is not as easy as people might think.”
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2024 Miami Grand Prix
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Tristan
6th May 2024, 11:50
That’s disappointing, explains why Verstappen felt so slow compared to Norris rather than the McLaren upgrade being particularly good.
Maybe we can still hope for a bit of both?
Mr B
6th May 2024, 12:19
He made a mistake, which I think is quite unusual for Max these days, and it may be had enough of an effect to deny him victory. We’ll never know for sure.
It would have been so much fun to see him and Lando going tooth and nail over the last 15 laps or so!
Chris (@racefanchris)
6th May 2024, 13:36
I disagree Lando won as a result of Max having damage, Lando was already the quickest car on track before Max went off. Max could not feel any difference, which suggests the impact of the damage would have been minimal. I expect Max and Red Bull to comfortably win both championships, but the evidence of Melbourne and Miami is there will be plenty of races this year where Red Bull do not have everything their way.
Biskit Boy (@sean-p-newmanlive-co-uk)
6th May 2024, 11:58
Lando was quicker than Max before he hit the bollard so I don’t think it made any real difference.
Boomerang
7th May 2024, 16:03
Thanks mate, some people are blind to see it. Max made a mistake because of extracting everything out of the car. I must say that as a rule of thumb people don’t see important things happening and a lot goes bellow the radar. It seems like off topic but when Rob Marshall left RBR I thought ouch, what a blow. Everyone kept talking about ingenious Adrian Newey. What we’re seeing now is condensed in this quote form McLaren’s website: “Rob’s incredible expertise will contribute to McLaren’s objective to out-develop competitors and close the gap at the front of the grid.”
Yes (@come-on-kubica)
6th May 2024, 12:30
Shouldn’t have hit the bollard then. If he’d won by 20 seconds they wouldn’t have mentioned this.
Jim from US (@jimfromus)
6th May 2024, 12:30
And yet the Ferraris could not close on VER in his damaged car. I don’t think the McLarens are faster than the Red Bulls but will need to see a few more races to really compare. PER completely destroyed his tires at turn 1.
Kribana (@krichelle)
6th May 2024, 12:45
Hamilton kept up with Perez somehow on similar aged tyres.
Davethechicken
6th May 2024, 15:00
It’s Perez dude, Stroll kept up with him as his teammate too in 2020 (Stroll actually led Perez in more racing laps than Perez did him that year.)
The barometer to use.
Chris (@pistonbroke)
6th May 2024, 17:47
Another way to answer it would be to say that, despite Lewis having the advantage of DRS in 3 DRS zones for every lap of his chase, whilst Sergio did not, Lewis was unable to convert that enormous advantage into a pass.
Boomerang
7th May 2024, 16:17
McLaren has a better chassis, they were gaining in the corners so much that I thought oops, RB20 is relying on Honda power to stay ahead. The major weapon of RBR at the moment is the best PU. They will shine on power tracks and they’ll be eaten alive on the streets of Monaco.
Dane
6th May 2024, 13:23
How does a plastic bollard which passed over the top of the car put a hole in the floor?
AlanD
6th May 2024, 13:33
Dane, he went straight on over the kerbs so it is possible it was the kerbing rather than the bollard that caused the damage.
BasCB (@bascb)
6th May 2024, 13:33
I imagine it is screwed down and the bolt just out say a cm or two above the tarmac and that tore up a small bit of the floor (a small hole that might have slowly grown bigger and bigger over time as the air ripped at it).
Asd
6th May 2024, 14:03
Max didnt say there simply was a hole, he said “they found a hole”, which suggests it was so small they only discovered it only after close examination.
If a car had lost the rear wing, they wouldnt say “the team found the rear wing was missing”, would they? ;))
Osnola
6th May 2024, 15:52
It was rather a large hole and the floor qas flexing as a result.
But i guess max was fighting his car balance the entire race, ergo the bollard mistake. So he probably did not even noticed the difference.
Another possibility is the damage happened earlier, but no nentions about that.
Peyton
6th May 2024, 14:29
The bollard has a base that is mounted to the track – Verstappen jumped over the kerb and then compressed onto that base. There is video of it and there is definitely some bits flying off but I don’t think it is significant. Maybe one of the strakes.
PeterG
6th May 2024, 15:38
He went right over the top of the bollard so I image the damage would have been caused by the metal part at the bottom of the bollard.
I’ve not looked at this particular bollard at Miami but i’ve looked at similar over the years on a few tracks and the bollard itself is usually some form of plastic or rubber but at the bottom of it there is usually a metal bracket that screws into a concrete base on the floor. And some bollards have a spring at the bottom (So that it deflects & comes back up shoudl it be hit) thats again fixed to the floor via a metal bracket.
When you watch the replay you see the metal bracket part come up as well so I would guess part of the floor scraped that and caused the damage and we know how important the floor is with ground effect based cars.
AlanD
6th May 2024, 19:46
Peter, interesting. I imagined the bracket would have been recessed to avoid this issue, but from what you have said, apparently not. I am aslo left wondering why they don’t use these sorts of bollards on more corners, or at the very least, the mounts. At the moment we hear arguments every race about whether or not someone was wide and how much of the huge run off area you can use. If they put these base mounts in the run off area, people running wide would have a significant chance of damaging the floor and ruining their race pace, which is still better than having a wall there and turning the car into a carbon-fibre jigsaw. And you don’t need stewards dithering over it, waiting for them to make a decision.
Sandwhichands
6th May 2024, 22:24
It looked like a normal traffic bollard. Those are not metal bases, it’s a hard weighted rubber. The bollards are in two pieces, the weight and the tube so you can stack them in a truck separately.
The weight is fairly rigid, if it got wedged sideways I’m sure it would have done some damage.
mars
6th May 2024, 17:15
Max was slighty faster than Leclerc and slower than Nando before and after lap 21. So nothinhg has changed on track speed dramaticly after he hit the bollard.
This is more of a continuation of the clown show for glorifying their drivers by finding excuses for every little mistake they are used to from the days of competition with Mercedes and Hamilton. Max is an proven amazing driver, times and rivals have changed, and I think there is no need for antics like this anymore.
Mog
6th May 2024, 21:35
There never was any need.
But the glorification will continue. And some people will think Max is just some form of driving god becuase of it
F1 loves driver hype. It sells the sport.
sam
6th May 2024, 21:04
I think the McLaren has a lot more in hand than they were able to display this race. it was a sprint weekend, and while they adjusted the sprint format to allow for setup changes between sprint and real race qualifying, it’s still minimal setup time.
considering how long they went in the race before changing to the hard compound, I think they have a lot to give, and they will be closer to Max at the end.
Johns
7th May 2024, 5:02
Miami is a terrible track. I dont think anything can be gleamed for this race.
Boomerang
7th May 2024, 16:20
The truth hurts, keep deleting them Keith.