Former Red Bull mechanic Calum Nicholas believes that even if Max Verstappen had avoided his opening-lap crash at the Dutch Grand Prix, the team simply lacked the pace to fight for the podium positions.
The final Formula 1 grand prix at Zandvoort got off to a dramatic start. While the rain had cleared before the start of the race, there were still some damp patches on the track. Home hero Verstappen dipped onto a wet spot as he came around the final banked corner, resulting in a heavy shunt into the wall.
While his race was over, his team-mate Liam Lawson, who was standing in for an injured Isack Hadjar, went on to finish seventh and pick up six points for the Milton Keynes outfit.
Speaking on the team's official Talking Bull podcast, Nicholas argued that Verstappen would not have been able to achieve much more than Lawson did if he had continued with the race.
Max Verstappen, Red Bull Racing
Photo by: Simon Galloway / LAT Images via Getty Images
"One of the things that we've perhaps struggled with a little this year is when we're in gusty, windy conditions, the car just seems a little bit unhappier," Nicholas explained.
"It creates a little bit more work for the drivers and we've got to work out what it is that's at the bottom of all that. But I don't think it's a disaster.
"Liam probably had a boring, lonely race. Big gap ahead of him, big gap behind him. But that was just the pace of the car. Even if Max had completed this race and not had the incident on lap one, I think that's pretty much where he would have ended up as well, in that space between the frontrunners and those behind us. I really don't think that there was a lot more to offer this week."
McLaren's Lando Norris won the Dutch Grand Prix and was joined on the podium by Mercedes' Kimi Antonelli and George Russell.
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Originally published by motorsport.com —
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