Verstappen radio issues
Max Verstappen called Red Bull's team radio failures "a disaster" after finishing third at the United States Grand Prix in Austin, a race won by Kimi Antonelli. He had been expected to challenge for victory but did not have the pace to match the Mercedes driver. The Verstappen radio issues struck again on Sunday: he was trying to tell his pit wall about engine braking problems, and when his engineer suggested a change of mode, he could not hear the reply properly.
"It's not the second time. It's already, I don't know how many times this year," Verstappen said. "Maybe we should just start communicating in sign language. It's probably cheaper as well." He added: "It's a disaster. Yeah, it's a disaster. It's really frustrating, to be honest."
The same fault disrupted his win in Singapore two weeks earlier, when driver and pit wall improvised their communication. Two races, two workarounds. A radio is a part that should not need a contingency plan.
The cost is workload. Engine braking settings change how the car turns in and how much load the rear carries, and a driver who cannot confirm a mode change is guessing while also managing tyres and traffic. Nothing shows on the timing screens as one clean mistake. It leaks away a tenth at a time.
Red Bull start problems
Verstappen's afternoon was damaged at launch as well. Charles Leclerc passed him on the opening lap after a poor getaway, and team-mate Isack Hadjar was cleared by both Leclerc and Lewis Hamilton. "Just the same always at the start, the problem we have," Verstappen told Sky Sports F1.
Hadjar went further and pointed at the clutch. "I do everything perfect in terms of procedure and I have clutch over delivery. These things are out of my control," he said. "I have poor radio coverage, can't hear what's happening, can't hear what's happening in the pits. I leave the pits with the wrong map, then I lose a second every lap on that hard tyre."
That is the radio fault converted into lap time: a missed instruction, a wrong engine map, a second a lap on a hard tyre. "It needs a redesign. That's it. The clutch. It's too fragile. It's not coping well with temperatures. It's a real struggle," Hadjar said.
Laurent Mekies on the repair job
Team principal Laurent Mekies said the radio problem is "making everyone's lives very difficult" at Milton Keynes. "We are all frustrated to struggle for the second race in a row with the radio issues," he said. "It is true that it's something that we would like to fix quite quickly, because it's an item that should be working without using too much of our energy."
The starts are a longer project. Mekies said launch performance runs across "pretty much all the departments of the company, probably except aerodynamics" — engine, gearbox, clutch. Red Bull have narrowed the gap since the opening rounds but are still short of the benchmark, and a quicker car has made the deficit more expensive. "The fact that the car in the meantime improved a lot and is fighting closer to the front makes that deficit even more painful now, because competition around us is very strong."
He promised progress, not a cure. "We will not be the benchmark before the end of the season, that it will require significant design and hardware changes, and that this is something that we will see only next year."
What to watch at the Mexico City GP
Formula 1 stays in the Americas for the second leg of the triple header, with the Mexico City Grand Prix next on the calendar. Two questions travel with Red Bull: whether the radio behaves, and whether the clutch gives either driver a clean first hundred metres.
Mekies has effectively answered the second already — small gains race by race, real fixes over the winter. The radio, by his own framing, is the item that should be solved sooner. Until it is, Verstappen is fighting at the front with one hand on the wheel and the other on a radio that may or may not work.
This report draws on Sky Sports' original coverage at skysports.com.
