Max Verstappen: Red Bull's weaknesses 'found out' in Monaco - ESPN

MONACO — Max Verstappen said the Monaco street circuit exposed the weaknesses of his Red Bull car after his run of eight consecutive pole positions came to an end on Saturday with a sixth-place grid slot for Sunday's grand prix.

Verstappen struggled for performance throughout Monaco's three practice sessions, blaming the lost lap time on his Red Bull's unwillingness to ride bumps and kerbs around the street circuit.

In qualifying, he aborted his final run after a brush with the wall at Turn One and finished 0.297 seconds off the pole position time of Ferrari's Charles Leclerc.

«We tried a lot of things on the car [during practice], literally nothing made it better, so you're just stuck,» Verstappen said.

«We really tried to optimise it but at one point when you're stuck with that… you can see in the second sector of the lap we are so bad, just because I can't touch any kerbs as it just upsets the car too much. We just lose a lot of lap time and it's incredibly difficult.

»We went soft [with the suspension], stiff, everything, but the car is like a go-kart, it's like I'm running without suspension. It's jumping around a lot, not absorbing any kerb strikes or bumps or camber changes, the last corner I think the amount of times I just jumped almost into the wall is really incredible."

Verstappen said the problem is not new to this year's car, but when his Red Bull teammate Sergio Perez won in Monaco in 2022 and when he won the race last year, rival teams like Ferrari and McLaren were not close enough to expose the problem.

«It's not something new, I mean we've had this problem since 2022, but of course for the last two years we had a car advantage and it gets masked a little bit as we gain a bit in the corners where the