The Secret Behind Verstappen's Comeback

There were three reasons Max Verstappen and his Red Bull managed to go from nowhere in qualifying to the podium in this weekend's Grand Prix, and that's what I'm going to explain today. First, what's up with the Red Bull, and why was it so wrong at Interlagos? The RB21 is what you'd call a peaky car. It has an incredibly narrow setup window. It needs to run really low to the ground to generate maximum downforce from the floor, which all of the cars do need to do, but it's particularly difficult with the Red Bull. When that ride height needs to be lifted up, the car just falls out of the ideal window. Interlagos is bumpy and undulating, and the track forces you to run higher ride heights just to survive. Otherwise, you'll be bottoming out constantly, and then the floor's aerodynamic platform becomes completely unstable. In practice, Verstappen was struggling with exactly that. Bouncing, vibrations, and no grip. After the sprint qualifying session, his feedback to the team was pretty blunt. He said that the car felt completely broken. Verstappen didn't have the confidence in the car. It was difficult for him to commit to the corners because he didn't know whether the grip was going to be available. After P4 in the sprint race, Red Bull knew they needed to do something different, as Max needs to win to close the championship gap. Going into qualifying, they actually took inspiration from Yuki Tsunoda's setup. He'd started the sprint from the pit lane and said that the car felt much better in that race. I think that shows you how unhappy Max was with the car in the sprint race. That he would take setup from Tsunoda. But then, as we know, qualifying was a complete disaster. P16 and Max's first ever Q1 elimination on pure pace in his entire career. So, they decided to start from the pit lane and change three critical things. The floor, the suspension setup, and a completely fresh power unit. Now, we've seen it quite a few times this year that Red Bull have been absolutely nowhere in practice and then managed to get a decent qualifying or race result. But why does that keep on happening? Well, one of the big reasons is probably their simulation tools. Laurent Mechies has admitted the team has lost correlation between simulation and on-track performance. And Helmut Marko was more direct. He said the correlation between the simulator and the track just doesn't work. Having driven these simulators at a couple of teams, I can tell you it's surprising how much the teams actually rely on them. Both the offline sims and the driver-in-the-loop simulators. Because with barely any testing time anymore, they use them for everything. So, when the simulation data is wrong, you start the weekend with a baseline that's already off. And maybe that's why we see such big swings in Red Bull's performance. Either the simulator sends them in the wrong direction, giving them a setup that doesn't work on track, or they just don't trust it. Which means they're starting from a baseline that's further away than other teams might be. Then they have to make up for it with engineering at the track. Now, there has been a shift this year. Since Laurent Mechies took over as team principal, the engineers have been told to listen more to Max at the track, relying less on the data. And as a driver, I'd say that's a good thing. And it seems to be working. Helmut Marko said they're more open now. And they're not just blindly using the simulator. They're balancing it with the driver feedback. And that's really important. Because with so little testing in modern F1, if the sim's broken, you are in trouble. Right, so going into the race, the first change that the team made was the floor. And as you know, the floor is critical. It generates the main part of the car's downforce through ground effect. When the floor isn't working properly, you've got a big problem. The issue is that the ground effect floors are incredibly sensitive to ride height. They need to run millimetres from the track surface to seal the airflow underneath the car and generate maximum downforce. For the race, Red Bull reverted to an older floor, which I expect was more compliant and had a wider operating window. It's the one that they used in Mexico and likely could tolerate a higher ride height without losing all of the downforce. Now, from a driver's perspective, when a car has such a small aerodynamic window, you have to be incredibly precise and delicate with every single input. And that is very difficult. If you're even slightly unrefined, if you go slightly over that limit, the consequences are massive. One small wrong input in how you come off the brakes or turn into the corner and you lose a huge amount of time. So most drivers, including all of Max's teammates, need to drive slightly below that limit to avoid making these big mistakes. It's safer, but ultimately slower. Now, most of the time, a refined and precise driver like Max can dance right on that edge. But when the car's fundamentally not working properly, as it was in free practice, even Max can't do it. So whatever the flaw that they changed to did, it allowed the car, combined with other setup changes, to have a little bit more flexibility than the car had in free practice, but more grip and bite than it did in qualifying. The second change was the suspension. Now, teams obviously don't share their setup data with us, but we can assume that Tsunoda's was probably running higher ride height and softer springs, which would give him a better ride but less aerodynamic grip, and of course, make the car a bit easier to drive. But for the race, with Max, Red Bull needed more performance. So what they likely did was go back to being stiffer and lower than Tsunoda's direction, but probably still higher than the original practice setup that was bouncing everywhere. So what can you actually change when you're changing the suspension and geometry? Well, first of all is the ride height. That's the obvious one, how far the car sits from the ground. Running lower gives you more aerodynamic grip, but on a bumpy track like Interlagos, you're bottomed out and the floor becomes unstable. Running higher means that you'll survive the bumps, but you'll be losing downforce. Then you've got the springs, which control how much the suspension compresses. Softer springs give you a smoother ride and better mechanical grip over the bumps, but the car feels less responsive and the aero platform moves around more. And when that moves around more, the floor works in a less efficient way. On the other hand, stiffer springs keep the car more planted aerodynamically, but it will give you a harsher ride bumping around and less mechanical grip. Then you have the dampers, which work with those springs to control how quickly the suspension moves. Softer damping lets the car absorb bumps more gradually, and stiffer damping keeps everything more controlled, but transmits more vibration to the chassis. So basically, you're moving all of these variables around, and Red Bull seemed to get that in a position that Max enjoys more. Probably a little bit more edgy and difficult to drive, but with that ultimate performance. And just about enough compliance to stop that violent bouncing, but still keeping the car sharp, which allows Max to extract the maximum. The third change was a completely fresh power unit. Red Bull fitted a brand new engine, the ICE turbocharger, both hybrid systems and the electronics, the complete package. They were changing from their fourth power unit, which had done multiple races and was at the end of its life cycle. And power units degrade over time. The internal combustion engine loses efficiency, the turbo wears, and the hybrid systems can't deploy energy as aggressively. And the performance difference is significant. A fresh power unit can give you somewhere around 15 to 20 horsepower more than a worn one. And that translates to roughly a tenth of a second per lap. But more importantly, you can run the most aggressive modes without worrying about it failing. And at Interlagos, that matters even more. The track sits at 800 meters elevation, which means the air is thinner and the turbo has to work harder to maintain power. And Interlagos, as we saw, is also brilliant for overtaking. So straight line speed is critical for a recovery drive. And if you remember back to 2021, Hamilton did something similar. Started from a long way back and the power advantage was massive. At that point, he had about a four kilometer per hour speed difference over his teammate. And as we know, managed to carve through the field. So the combination of a fresh engine and the Interlagos circuit, where overtaking is possible, made all the difference. And the fourth thing, of course, is max. But how good was the drive really? Well, the car was significantly faster with that fresh engine. The setup was finally working. You could see how the car was behaving and max was able to push it compared to the other cars. And of course, max did have that puncture early on, which dropped him from incredible progression from P13 back to P18. But actually, that probably helped him because it forced him onto the medium tire under the virtual safety car, which saved him time and probably put him on a better strategy. But to pull off a drive like that, you need all three elements. You need the car advantage. You need a setup that works and you need a brilliant driver. And max was incredibly precise and efficient with his overtakes. Decisive, clean and no hesitation. He was consistent throughout the race and I didn't see any mistakes. And that is what separates the best drivers from anyone else. He executed perfectly. And that's why he keeps on looking like the best driver on the grid. Although you have to say during this weekend, Norris performed absolutely brilliantly as well. Thank you very much for watching this video. If you want to know more about the 2026 regulations and the possible problems with them, watch that video just here. Thank you very much for watching and I'll see you next time.