{"id":512440,"date":"2025-10-19T17:56:15","date_gmt":"2025-10-19T17:56:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/512440\/"},"modified":"2025-10-19T17:56:15","modified_gmt":"2025-10-19T17:56:15","slug":"does-red-bulls-aero-map-explain-verstappens-austin-f1-pace","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/512440\/","title":{"rendered":"Does Red Bull’s aero map explain Verstappen\u2019s Austin F1 pace?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Saturday in Austin turned out to be an even better day than expected for Max Verstappen<\/a>‘s championship hopes. The Dutchman saw both McLarens drop out of the sprint<\/a>, scored eight points himself, and later that day secured pole position for the grand prix.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

Despite that, Verstappen and Red Bull were not entirely satisfied with the car\u2019s balance during the sprint. The reigning world champion said the ride \u2013 especially at the rear \u2013 didn\u2019t feel good, while senior advisor Helmut Marko added that Red Bull’s tyre degradation was higher than expected.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Read Also:<\/p>\n

The team believes these issues were mainly linked to the car’s set-up. Verstappen explained during the post-sprint press conference that, unlike earlier in the season, the team no longer feels lost but still needed to tweak certain details after parc ferme opened. Those changes have since been made, and Marko expects Sunday\u2019s race pace to be stronger than during the sprint.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Red Bull able to extract potential with low ride height in qualifying?\u00a0<\/p>\n

Mercedes<\/a> driver George Russell<\/a>, however, points to another factor in Red Bull\u2019s Austin pace. In his view, the gap between Red Bull\u2019s qualifying speed and its sprint race performance at the Circuit of the Americas<\/a> mainly stems from the car\u2019s characteristics instead of set-up.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cMax was obviously super quick. It’s not the first time we’ve seen them being super strong in qualifying on high-speed tracks. They were on pole in Silverstone, on pole in Suzuka, and on pole here. They seem to have really good downforce when the car is really low to the ground, which is what you have in the high-speed corners.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Russell explained that this is especially true during qualifying, when the cars are pushed to their limits and cornering speeds are at their peak. It\u2019s when the ground-effect suction is at its strongest, pulling the car close to the asphalt.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"Max <\/p>\n

Max Verstappen, Red Bull Racing, George Russell, Mercedes<\/p>\n

Photo by: Simon Galloway \/ LAT Images via Getty Images<\/p>\n

During the shorter of two races this weekend, Russell was able to stay much closer to Verstappen and even attempted an opportunistic overtake. Asked by Autosport\u00a0if that surprised him given Red Bull\u2019s advantage in qualifying, Russell clarified his theory:\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cNo, not really, because I think their aero map is very good when the car is very low to the ground. And you have that in the very high-speed corners. For us, it’s the opposite, we’re very bad in these conditions,\u201d the Mercedes<\/a> driver said. \u201cIn the race, you’re going through the high-speed corners maybe 20 kilometres or so slower. That means the car is higher, so we’re not dropping off the cliff and everything converges.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Russell suggested that Red Bull\u2019s key strength at COTA becomes less effective in race conditions. With everything on the limit and the car being pushed low to the ground, Red Bull can exploit the RB21\u2019s high-speed performance, whereas Mercedes can\u2019t match that peak ground effect.\u00a0<\/p>\n

But over a race distance, where constantly repeating qualifying laps would wear down skid blocks and tyres excessively, the advantage narrows \u2013 explaining why Mercedes looked relatively stronger in the sprint than during both qualifying sessions.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Mercedes in contention for US GP podium?\u00a0<\/p>\n

With that in mind, Russell hopes to play a role in Sunday\u2019s fight up front, starting from fourth on the grid. \u201cI hope we can fight for the podium. There are obviously a lot of different teams around us. Oscar is out of position, and I expect him to be fast, so he needs to get around Turn 1 first.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

At McLaren<\/a>, the lack of data from the sprint race was seen as a disadvantage, but Russell downplayed that. With two safety cars, the Briton argued that nobody got a proper long-run reference.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

Read Also:<\/p>\n

\u201cWe finished two and a half seconds in front of a Williams<\/a>. We would have expected more performance than that, and we haven’t seen what McLaren<\/a> is capable of. We always know that they’re pretty special in those hot conditions. During the sprint race, what did we do, maybe 10 or 11 laps. Tomorrow we’ve got 55 laps to do,\u201d Russell said, making clear that the main race will be a step into the unknown for everyone \u2013 not just McLaren.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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– The Autosport.com Team<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Saturday in Austin turned out to be an even better day than expected for Max Verstappen‘s championship hopes.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":512441,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[163541,707,9824,1073,4859,749,167507,79,16,15,163611],"class_list":{"0":"post-512440","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-sports","8":"tag-circuit-of-the-americas","9":"tag-formula-1","10":"tag-george-russell","11":"tag-max-verstappen","12":"tag-mercedes","13":"tag-red-bull-racing","14":"tag-russellu2019s-theory-does-red-bulls-aero-map-explain-verstappenu2019s-austin-f1-pace","15":"tag-sports","16":"tag-uk","17":"tag-united-kingdom","18":"tag-united-states-gp"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115402125689553559","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/512440","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=512440"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/512440\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/512441"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=512440"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=512440"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=512440"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}