Max Verstappen is hoping that an upgrade package for the Red Bull RB20 to be introduced in Hungary will give the Milton Keynes team “a good boost.” The World Champion indicated that while the team has brought several packages this season, the latest one is the most significant to date.
Red Bull has faced increasingly strong competition in recent weeks, with McLaren regularly challenging for victories and Mercedes winning the last two events.
“I think the last few races, we have not been the quickest car,” he said. “So I don’t expect that to suddenly now be any different.
“Of course, we are bringing upgrades, so hopefully that will give it a good boost. But at the moment, I just want to try and see how that will work this weekend.
“We brought stuff [before], but they were not particularly big, I would say. So this one is bit bigger than what we have brought already. So I think for everyone this is an important weekend.”
Asked about the possibility of the package not working as well as planned he replied: “If this is not giving us some good lap time, then… I don’t know, of course, how the rest of the season is going to evolve, but at the same time, I also don’t know what’s coming from the other teams, right?
“So we just focus on ourselves. We are bringing quite some things to the car, and of course, I hope that will give us a bit of lap time.”
He added: “I mean, it’s always with an upgrade if it doesn’t work, it’s not good, right? Because you work on it, and you, of course, expect it to deliver on track.”
Verstappen admitted that rivals have made more progress over the course of this season.
“If you look at it realistically, other teams have made bigger steps,” he said. “That’s very clear. But I know that my team is pushing as hard as they can.
“To find performance is just very complicated with these cars. Some bits might also be just in the setup itself, but at the same time, we need to find more performance.
“Of course, as the leading team, you have less time also in the wind tunnel. I’m not using that as an excuse because I don’t want to think like that. But the reality is that we have less time. We try to do the best we can.”
Verstappen conceded that the RB20 has been a tricky car to drive at times in 2024.
“I think it’s just the way we set up the car,” he said. “Maybe also what we get back from the simulator, all these kind of things needs to be probably a bit better. Plus, we just need more performance.
“Because naturally, if you have a car that has better performance, it becomes normally a better car to drive as well because you don’t need to push it over or close to the limit every time.”
Verstappen also conceded that rivals have pushed Red Bull harder this season.
“In the beginning of the year, I felt actually really good with the car,” he said. “Probably, it was even more natural than the year before for me to drive the car, which was a positive thing.
“But then I would say, after a few races with, of course, the competition probably also closing up, we just had weekends which were a bit messy and a bit difficult to find the sweet spot.
“In the first few races, we didn’t really have a lot of issues, and everything just seemed to click a bit more naturally.”
