Red Bull’s technical director Pierre Wache has praised Max Verstappen for his incredible ability to maximize the performance of his car. Wache claimed that Verstappen’s ability to extract lap time from their 2020 challenger led the team to develop the car in the wrong direction.
Red Bull spent most of the 2020 season chasing Mercedes and their mighty W11 challenger, which was clearly the fastest car on the grid at the time. However, the 2022 world champion managed to give the Silver Arrows a run for their money on a few occasions – a feat that his teammate Alex Albon never managed.
Wache, however, claims that Verstappen’s ability to extract maximum performance from his car led the Milton-Keynes-based squad to develop the car in the wrong direction. Wache believes that Red Bull might have posed a stronger challenge to Mercedes in 2020 had they understood their RB16 challenger a little better – as they did in 2021.
Speaking to The Race, Pierre Wache said of Max Verstappen’s talent:
“Max’s talent was a contributory cause to the problem we had. He has an ability to control instability that would be impossible for some others. We know that sometimes, making a car on the edge in this way can create a quicker car. So we went in this direction and Max was extracting laptime from it and so we kept going in that direction.”
Guard added:
“But it was only because he has so much talent that he was still getting laptime from it as we kept going. We realized after a while that we had reached the ceiling with the car in this way and also you saw with the other drivers, with Pierre [Gasly in 2019] and Alex, they struggled to extract the best from it. We had gone too far in this direction.”
Max Verstappen lauded by his race engineer Gianpiero Lambiase
Max Verstappen has reportedly had his $15 million private jet renovated so that he could put a full racing simulator in the cabin 
Max Verstappen has reportedly had his $15 million private jet renovated so that he could put a full racing simulator in the cabin
https://t.co/xBonvFq34m
Max Verstappen’s race engineer Gianpiero Lambiase said that the Dutchman is really easy to work with and has a ‘gift’ for the sport. Lambiase has played a crucial role in helping the 24-year-old become the formidable driver that he is today.
The reigning world champion himself recently claimed that he can’t see himself in the sport without Lambiase, who works behind the scenes, giving the Red Bull driver all the information and data he needs.
GP has praised Max Verstappen’s honest and open approach to racing, claiming the two-time world champion has the perfect mix of an analytical yet natural feel for racing. Lambiase explained in the Red Bulletin Heroes Verstappen Edition magazine:
“The relationship between a driver and a race engineer is based on mutual trust. The more direct a driver is, the more he trusts the team. My experience is that if a driver stops giving his honest opinion about the car and starts circling it, the results get worse. Max is direct but so am I. That makes working with him very open, honest and easy.”
Lambiase continued:
“Some drivers want to get to the bottom of the data, while others don’t want to be involved at all. And then there’s Max. He explains very precisely where he can push the car to the limit and what exactly he needs to drive faster.” “We always know what to do because of his instructions. A driver who can communicate clearly is a great gift. He has an incredibly natural feel for racing, coupled with a good analytical mind.”
It will be interesting to see whether Max Verstappen can make good use of GP’s experience in 2023 and secure yet another title in the sport.
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Edited by Shubham Banerjee
