Max Verstappen started from second place at the Monaco GP, but saw the race end practically before it really started on Sunday.
The Dutch driver felt anomalies during the formation lap and had difficulty maintaining engine speeds in the ideal range during the start procedure. Verstappen was unable to start the car correctly and, after completing just the first spin, he had to return to the pits to abandon the race.
In a press interview, Red Bull team principal Laurent Mekies confirmed that the problem at the start had its origins in the engine. He further revealed that the team was already planning to change the power unit after the weekend in Monaco.
“We identified what the problem was,” Mekies said. “He appeared on the formation lap and didn’t give us or Max a chance. That’s it.”
“As you know, this was also the first power unit Max used this season and it was already scheduled to be changed after Monaco.”
“Of course this was not what we wanted. The work that Max and the entire team did to reach this level of performance in Monaco was extraordinary. For that, we can only apologize to him.”
“It may still be too early to talk about how we will resolve it, but we believe we have detected what happened,” he added.
From Red Bull’s point of view, the most positive aspect of the weekend was the competitive performance shown by the car on the streets of Monaco.
When evaluating the event, Mekies highlighted: “Max was very strong on Friday. We tried to extract a little more performance from the car, but we couldn’t do it in the third free practice session. So we had to find a different sweet spot.”
“The engineers and the team did a great job finding this new sweet spot. These adjustments were probably even better than those from Friday, at least for qualifying.”
