Red Bull team boss Christian Horner has revealed that Max Verstappen’s win prospects in Formula 1’s Miami Grand Prix were dashed when he incurred floor damage.
Verstappen had led the entire opening stint from pole position, but he dropped behind Lando Norris when the McLaren driver capitalised on pitting under a Safety Car.
The Dutchman could not maintain pace with Norris and dropped 7.6 seconds back, citing a continuation of the balance troubles he’d endured earlier in the weekend.
But Horner has stated that a sizeable part of the floor on Verstappen’s RB20 was missing, which could have come when he clattered a cone at the chicane on Lap 22.
“I don’t think we had a great balance all weekend,” Horner admitted.
“Obviously, he hit the bollard and that has actually done quite a lot of damage to the underside of the car, so we will have to look at exactly what the effect of that was.
“It is a reasonable amount of the area around the left rear floor.
“There is a reasonable amount that’s missing and you can see it awfully flexing as well, so it certainly wouldn’t be helping.”
Speaking in the FIA press conference, Verstappen had dampened queries that he had been nursing a wounded car, attributing his woes to struggles on the Hard tyre.
When asked about Horner’s assessment, Verstappen replied: “It didn’t feel different, so I don’t know. Maybe it was already damaged. I don’t know.
“I mean I hit that thing and then my pace was the same so I didn’t really know if there was damage.”
Expanding on the moment that seemed to have hindered his race, he remarked: “I didn’t like it, so I decided to take it out and test the durability of the front wing as well.
“So that’s a crash test done. Yeah, there was no damage. The cone was out of the way for everyone, so it was basically a free-for-all after that.”
However, Horner established that Verstappen’s words had come prior to inspecting the car and that his driver was at a constant disadvantage through the first corner.
“He lost two-and-a-half-tenths in Turn 1 every lap [to Norris],” Horner added.
“Whether that was because of the damage, when you actually see the pictures of what was missing, it wasn’t designed like that.”
Verstappen would later concur with Horner’s comments in Red Bull’s press release quotes, admitting that the close-up view ratified what he had been told beforehand.
“When we took the car back to the garage, we also found that the floor was damaged and had a hole in which could have been picked up from hitting the cone,” he said.
