Has Max Verstappen thrown the towel in Hungary? Yes, he has that! Not in a figurative sense, but in the literal sense: The four -time world champion threw a real towel out of his car during the second free training at Hungaroring. Between curves 3 and 4, the Dutch put into his cockpit and threw a white cloth towards the right side.
“It was just a towel with which you usually wip off your face when you come back to the box,” he explains afterwards. And for some reason, his team in the vehicle was forgotten.
“It was still in the car when I drove out. And instead of maybe flying somewhere between my feet – which would have been dangerous – I drove down from the ideal line and disposed of it in the safest way that was possible,” he says. “I think the commissioners understood that.”
Because for the campaign, the Red Bull Pilot had to answer in front of the commissioners after the session. He himself got away without further consequences, because the stewards believed the Dutch his version of history.
FIA commissioners press an eye too
“The driver said that the face towel had slipped from the lap to the side of the seat in the garage and the team did not notice that it was still in the cockpit,” says her side.
“When he became aware of this, he drove to the far right and tried to throw the towel away from the car and the route as far as possible.”
But: The commissioners criticized a violation of Article 34.14 c) of the sporting regulations, which deals with the release of a vehicle in an uncertain state.
“The commissioners found that the towel could potentially get into the footwell and impair control over the vehicle. Therefore, the vehicle was evaluated as released in an unsafe condition,” they report.
However, the commissioners consider this case to be less serious than cases in which hard (and thus potentially dangerous) objects remain in the cockpit. Therefore, only a warning against the Red Bull team was pronounced.
Verstappen struggles: Nothing works at the moment!
In general, Friday from Red Bull’s point of view was not made to measure. Verstappen landed only in 14th place with 1.1 seconds behind the top and left long faces in the Red Bull garage. “Nothing works at the moment,” the world champion complains after the session.
“The grip level was extremely low, I didn’t feel a real feeling for the car, no balance – difficult to say what the problem is,” he struggles. “I am sure that we can get it better, but today it was really bad. We really have to understand where the problem is and what exactly leads to the car behaves so badly.”
So far, he has definitely not seen a stab against McLaren in Hungary: “They formally fly,” he says, “but even in second place we still lack a lot at the moment”.
Yuki tsunoda beats off
Teammate Yuki Tsunoda was even before Verstappen on Friday, but was also only ninth with 0.861 seconds behind and struggles by car. “To be honest, I don’t think the balance is the main problem. I think our real problem is the grip – I should usually feel it, but at the moment it is just missing,” says the Japanese.
At least there were a few progress in the second training session. “Overall, we still have to fight as a team,” said Tsunoda.
Whether Red Bull gets the problems under control will be shown. “It is probably not an easy thing. We have changed many things to the car for second training session. I am sure that there are Max ‘car as well as my positive things that you can take with you,” he says.
“We have to bring this together and I think we have to find a more fundamental weak point that we have overlooked so far. And we definitely have to find out until qualifying tomorrow.”