Red Bull and Max Verstappen stunned Formula 1 with a dominant victory at Monza – the same circuit that last year left them calling the car “a monster.” Twelve months later, the turnaround couldn’t have been more emphatic.
A bespoke low-downforce rear wing, a fresh Honda engine, and above all a new race-weekend philosophy combined to deliver a crushing win.
“The car worked perfectly this time, the strategy was good, so everything was fine,” Helmut Marko said in the Monza paddock after the race. “And Max was sovereign, besides that first corner. To win with 20 seconds’ margin on McLaren, that’s a real achievement.”
Marko had been bold enough to predict victory before the weekend even began. “You’re always shocked when I say something!” he laughed afterwards, as the media remembered his Friday prophecy.
No longer “blindly” following the simulator
Behind the scenes, Red Bull shifted its mindset. No longer are they blindly chained to the simulator numbers. Instead, driver feedback and engineering instinct have been put back at the heart of the operation.
“The difference is that the preparation of a weekend is a different one now,” Marko explained. “Laurent is an excellent engineer, so now the idea is more to take whatever the simulation shows us, but mix that with the experience that Max has and with the experience that our racing engineers have. That’s how we want to make a car that is more predictable and drivable.
“This is the product of that. Basically, it’s the same product as we had before, just some upgrades were coming and they are working. But 20 seconds on McLaren, I wouldn’t have predicted that.”
From Budapest to Zandvoort to Monza – proof the change works
Marko pointed to recent races as the turning points. “I’ve already said in Budapest that we knew what we did wrong, unfortunately we couldn’t change it any more. But in Zandvoort it was shown that the direction we are going into is the right one. Zandvoort was never our circuit, and we were lucky with second place there, but third was a secured spot for us, and we developed from there.
“Last year we were 40 seconds behind the winner in Monza, and back then we had a monster.”
Red Bull’s “monster” is gone – in its place, a refined RB21 that, with Verstappen at the wheel, just dismantled the field at Monza.
