Red Bull F1 team reveals extent of Verstappen's damage

Red Bull has revealed the true extent of the front wing damage Max Verstappen picked up during Formula 1’s Styrian Grand Prix.

Verstappen had kept within touching distance of eventual race-winner Lewis Hamilton for the majority of the second consecutive race held at the Red Bull Ring but was passed by Valtteri Bottas late on.

The Dutchman’s pace dropped off in the closing stages after sustaining damage to the bottom of his right-hand endplate. The endplate then became lodged in his bargeboard after falling off after Verstappen run over the notoriously brutal kerbs at the Spielberg track.

Explaining the damage after the race, Red Bull’s chief engineer Paul Monaghan said: “Not only have we got bits of stuff hanging out of the bottom of the front wing endplate on track, we've now got a bargeboard with a dirty bit of footplate in it from the front wing.

"And we’ve incurred a little bit of damage on the rear wing. I suspect some pieces have vibrated and detached, so the condition in which we released the car into the race has not matched the condition in which we've received the car back post race.”

Red Bull team principal Christian Horner could not put an exact figure on how much time Verstappen lost due to the damage, but believes it would have impacted on his tyre life.

“It was on the kerbs here, on the exit of Turn Nine," Horner explained.  "The guys in the operations room immediately saw the loss of downforce.

"We couldn't see how much damage it had done until the car came into parc ferme at the end of the race there.

"It was a significant shift, but what effect that had on tyre life we need to look closely at the data to understand."