Max Verstappen claims Red Bull can find “big margins” by fixing RB20’s key weakness

Max Verstappen says Red Bull can improve their F1 car by “quite a big margin” if they can cure the main weakness currently afflicting the RB20.

Red Bull endured their worst weekend of the season in Monaco as Verstappen could only finish sixth, before he bounced back to win the Canadian Grand Prix, though the Montreal event also proved a challenge.

Both races have highlighted ride over kerbs and bumps as being a major weakness of the RB20 car, raising hopes of a potential championship battle this year. But Verstappen has issued a warning to Red Bull’s rivals.

“The last few races have been quite difficult, but not only just difficult, too many problems as well, throughout the whole weekend. So we need to have a cleaner weekend,” he said after his sixth victory of the season in Montreal.

“We're struggling a lot with the kerbing and the bumps. So we definitely have an area we can work on and definitely improve the car by quite a big margin if we get that under control.”

And the reigning world champion is confident Red Bull can fix the issue without compromising on the biggest strengths of the RB20.

“I really think that we can solve this without influencing any other part of the car,” he explained.

“We know that this is a weakness and I also know that we are flat out working on it to try and fix it, because I really feel like it's quite a big performance limitation for us at the moment.

“Naturally, I'm also looking forward to some tracks maybe where we don't really need to take too many kerbs or too many bumps.

“You can see already, every weekend so far, some teams are a bit stronger at particular tracks, and I guess that in a way, of course, makes it also very exciting.”

Red Bull team principal Christian Horner echoed Verstappen’s comments, saying: "All of it has to work in tandem, so you are pushing the aerodynamic platform of the car, but you want the car to ride kerbs.

“What was encouraging was that our sector three this weekend was competitive, even with the stiffness of the car rattling over that last chicane.

“If you look throughout the running. we were very competitive there. So, despite it being uncomfortable, we were still able to be quick enough.

“I think there is genuine performance there so if we can unlock that, then we will see it free up lap time."