A weekend absolutely worth canceling. TO Singapore the first non-Red Bull el victory of the season arrived'Ferrari signed with Carlos Sainz. In fact, the first RB19 is only fifth and it is that of world champion Max Verstappen. The Dutchman never found the right feeling with the car throughout the weekend, complaining several times on the radio his enormous difficulties in becoming familiar with the car.
Singapore disastrous
First a qualification and then a race which raised more than a few doubts about the lackluster performance of Red Bull, never fighting – unlike all the other top cars on the grid – in order to win this latest event of the season. Many have focused their attention on the technical directive DT018, regarding the flexibility of the wings, which came into force precisely for the Marina Bay weekend. However, it is difficult to think that a directive could, from its introduction, causing such a significant drop in performance. One of the factors that influenced the Red Bull it is undoubtedly related to ground clearance. The RB19 performs best with a ground clearance that would have ruined the bottom at Marina Bay.
Verstappen: “I think we still have several problems”
Ground clearance was undoubtedly one of the problems (not the only one) that compromised the Austrian team's weekend. The team never succeeded to identify the right window to allow the RB19 to perform, considering the set up error also made in qualifying. To certify these difficulties, which have not yet disappeared on the RB19, it's Verstappen himself"I think the problems we had during this weekend are still present on the car, even if less extensive. A bit like always, our car is better on Sunday in the race and I think you could see it, especially when we switched to the mediums towards the final part of the race. In that circumstance I had good pace and I managed the tires to make sure they lasted until the end."
"We talked a lot about strategy, but I didn't want to make any kind of mistake, also because losing half a second or even a second here can really make the difference".
Has the directive made an impact? We'll find out in Suzuka
It is impossible, at least to date, to understand whether - and if so, how much - the directive may have influenced the performance of the car. For this Suzuka, scheduled this weekend, will be fundamental to understand whether the FIA, with this new directive, hit and sank the car by the strongest gap this season.
