Max Verstappen Left Helpless as Adrian Newey’s Departure Exposes Clear Gaps for Christian Horner and Co. in Imola

Reports from the Milton Keynes stable suggested that Adrian Newey did not have a big influence on the RB20 design like he’s had on the previous cars. Christian Horner also credited Pierre Wache and the team greatly for the design. And now that Adrian Newey has announced his exit, clear gaps within the team can be seen as Max Verstappen struggled big time at the Emilia Romagna GP.

As Adrian Newey’s exit was announced, it was confirmed that the mastermind will no longer be involved in the F1 project and will focus on the RB17 hypercar till he leaves the team in Q1 of 2025. Newey recently spoke about how he was no longer a part of the strategic decisions and engineering meetings on track. Red Bull struggled big time in Miami, and a similar thing happened at the Imola GP practice.

There might as well be a relationship between Newey not giving his input and Red Bull messing up the setups. As a result, Max Verstappen struggled to get the car under his control and complained of not having any grip or balance within the car. The Dutchman went off track and into the gravel multiple times during the sessions.

Pierre Wache has now come out to detail the issues with the car, saying, “I think he’s clearly having some issues in Turns 11, 12 and 14. Something we are looking at. I think the guys are there at the moment, while we speak, to look at the data, to see what we can do on the set-up to help him. But I will not say it’s a normal Friday for him, but it’s a normal Friday as an engineer, to try to improve the car for the next session.”

But what do the Red Bull drivers have to say about the practice sessions? Let’s have a look.

Max Verstappen and Sergio Perez were unimpressed by the RB20’s performance at Imola

Both Sergio Perez and Max Verstappen struggled in both practice sessions. They finished FP1 in P4 and P5, respectively, whereas they dropped down to P7 and P8 in FP2. The car seemed to be a handful, either not wanting to turn into a corner or oversteering into a corner, with drivers ending up running through the gravel traps.

Max Verstappen said, “Today we were just severely off-pace that we need to fix. I guess it can’t be worse than what we had today, right? We’ll look at a few things that we can do better for tomorrow.” Sergio Perez agreed to Verstappen’s comments and said, “We have a lot of work ahead of us overnight. It was difficult at certain points with the wind, which was quite strong. But we expect that this will change a bit tomorrow. So it will be interesting.”

Do you think Imola will present an opportunity for either McLaren or Ferrari to take their second win of the season?