While Red Bull seems to be making steps towards the top two teams, Mercedes and Ferrari, in 2017 there is still some way to go before they are fighting for victories.
The team has admitted its chassis isn’t the strongest, but is improving, while the Renault power unit continues to hold it back.
Of course, Renault was left playing catch-up at the start of the hybrid era and it’s still yet to get to the levels of performance and reliability experienced by Mercedes and Ferrari.
A big update was promised for mid-season but it’s been binned, in place of “constant improvements which overall will make a difference”.
Getting rid of the considerable upgrade isn’t exactly encouraging and Verstappen is concerned Renault’s disadvantage could run into 2018 too.
He told Dutch show Peptalk:
“You can see that the car has improved a lot, but now the power has to arrive as well. But this year nothing is coming, as you’ve probably read. So, I’m concerned about that.
“They did promise this, but in the end little has arrived in terms of updates this year. That’s very disappointing. And I’m concerned about next year. This year we wanted to go for the title, as a team, but we are far away from that.”
One-time F1 race winner Verstappen has described his season as “crap” to Dutch media, after retiring from the Canadian Grand Prix in the early stages.
He said he had got into “robot mode” after 10 laps but “two laps down the road everything stopped working”. It was reportedly an energy store failure that caused the DNF and has sparked more frustration from the Red Bull team.
