Data crunch: did Verstappen crack under pressure?

While Max Verstappen was by no means fighting for race victory, he had an unclean qualifying in Mexico, which has been a Red Bull favorite for years despite Mercedes dominance in the past.

The headline of this year’s Formula 1 season was the massive drop in performance of Mercedes compared to their dominant form last year and also in previous years.

Therefore, a good hard and quick analysis is to take each manufacturer’s best lap in qualifying and compare it to their relative previous best lap from last year or last year, whichever the numbers go. It’s a study I’ve been doing for many years now as it tracks the steady rise of AlphaTauri and McLaren, the collapse of Ferrari-powered cars in 2020, and this year’s implosion in the qualifying pace of Mercedes F1.

Patterns and trends tell a story, and the pattern was that every F1 circuit was visited this year, Mercedes has qualified Red Bull the most before except Turkey, but that was a wild card. In the races where the track conditions were dry, Mercedes never extended an earlier qualifying gap to Red Bull. In any case, Red Bull got a considerable part out of Mercedes’s qualifying lead delta and in many cases completely exceeded them in qualifying pace.

We arrive in Mexico City, the first race on the calendar this year in which Red Bull last overtook Mercedes at real speed. Mercedes didn’t do well in 2019, so jumping back to 2018 to use their best lap so far to compare to Red Bull’s 2019 lap indicates that Red Bull is at least 0.136 seconds per lap ahead at qualifying pace would have. Given the trend above, and since this track has always been cheap for Red Bull, it seems like Red Bull is at least set for pole position. Using the 2021 performance results as an indicator between Red Bull and Mercedes, a dominant 1-2 looks almost certain for the Austrian team.

Instead, Mercedes saw the front row in qualifying, and while it looked like Mercedes pulled one out of the bag, the reality is that Red Bull fumbled this one big time.

Qualification pace

Qualifying was Red Bull’s worst of the year and finished seventh among the rivals.

This is a comparison with the same US GP qualifying data that puts into perspective how bad it was for Red Bull. This is undeniable evidence that Mercedes was not a sand dredger nor magically enhanced their performance, as they performed essentially the same in Mexico as they did in Austin Texas. Where does this magical pace come from? The result is entirely caused by Red Bull.

Yuki Tsunoda

It seems that Yuki Tsunoda is being made a scapegoat, plain and simple. While the rookie was a visual distraction for Sergio Perez and Max Verstappen, it certainly caused Perez enough grief for the Mexican to abandon his lap and that Verstappen cursed him after qualifying, but it didn’t cost Red Bull a pole position.

The exact devastating moment in the Japanese rookie’s case is that, with Verstappen appearing to be choosing a competitive lap, the Dutchman registers a yellow second sector shortly after overtaking the Tsunoda / Perez incident and a total of +0.270 seconds behind Valtteri Bottas. The look is awful, it seems like Verstappen is “Tsunoda’ed”, but it’s just not true.

After Verstappen’s final lap of qualifying, that yellow second sector was triggered by running 0.001 seconds slower than his previous best time. Looking at the breakdown of the sector, the last part of it is shown in green, suggesting that it was faster than any previous lap on that section. However, that does not mean that he did not lose any time, but the maximum that could reasonably be attributed to Tsunoda’s loss of time to Verstappen was a maximum of 0.050s to 0.100s. Sergio Perez was also unable to beat a previous personal best.

In the case of Tsunoda, it was an unnecessary situation and while it probably didn’t affect the Red Bull cars’ finishing positions, it just looked bad.

Championship pressure

Red Bull’s arrival in Mexico marks the first time since the Sebastian Vettel era that the pitch has tilted in their favor. They seemed to have beaten Mercedes only to get their biggest qualifying flop of the season. Have the Red Bull squad, and especially Verstappen, succumbed to the pressure? It certainly seems to be so.