Former F1 world champion Jacques Villeneuve has questioned Max Verstappen after he saw his championship lead reduced for a third consecutive race ahead of this weekend’s Singapore Grand Prix.
Verstappen surprisingly lost three points to Lando Norris at the Azerbaijan Grand Prix on Sunday, so leads the Drivers’ Championship by 59 points with seven events remaining.
Norris started down in 15th, nine places behind Verstappen, but used the alternative strategy of starting on the hard tyres and switching to the mediums to reel in a 15-second deficit to Verstappen after his pit stop, and overtook him to finish in fourth.
Although Verstappen covered the inside into the first corner, he could not do anything about the charging Norris with three laps remaining and the momentum is firmly with McLaren going into the Singapore Grand Prix, live on Sky Sports F1.
Max for the last few races sounds downbeat. He’s not even feisty in the race and doesn’t fight that hard, said 1997 F1 world champion Villeneuve.
Even on the radio, we barely hear him. Something has changed.
He knows the car isn’t driving as he wants and his team-mate was a lot quicker than him.
Verstappen started in sixth and was set to finish behind Red Bull team-mate Sergio Perez for the first time this season, until the Mexican collided with Carlos Sainz on the penultimate lap.
Red Bull changed Verstappen’s car set-up significantly before qualifying on Saturday, which contributed to his lack of pace compared to Perez.
It was quite a difficult race. After qualifying I don’t think the final change was the right one, said Verstappen.
We paid the price for that. It was as simple as that because if you look at Checo he had a much better race. It seemed like he was more comfortable. From our side, we tried something else and it didn’t work out. You win and lose as a team.
Of course, I’m not happy with the performance. Sometimes you make some final changes before qualifying and it works, unfortunately this time it didn’t.
Verstappen has scored just one podium in the last five races as Red Bull appear to have been outdeveloped by their rivals.
It is a complete contrast to last season when he won a record-breaking 19 races.
Another factor could be the changing track conditions and tire management, as seen in Singapore where they struggled with the car setup. Perhaps they have not been able to adapt quickly enough to these changes.
Regardless of the reasons, Red Bull will need to address these issues quickly if they want to maintain their championship challenge against Mercedes. Singapore may not be their strongest track, but they will need to find a way to bounce back and perform at their best.