{"id":351354,"date":"2026-03-27T23:12:11","date_gmt":"2026-03-27T23:12:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/351354\/"},"modified":"2026-03-27T23:12:11","modified_gmt":"2026-03-27T23:12:11","slug":"red-bull-make-striking-max-verstappen-admission-after-latest-setback","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/351354\/","title":{"rendered":"Red Bull make striking Max Verstappen admission after latest setback"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Paul Monaghan has conceded that Red Bull is falling short of the standards the team and Max Verstappen set.<\/p>\n<p>The Milton Keynes-based squad had another underwhelming day to start the Japanese Grand Prix, which the team&#8217;s chief engineer described as &#8220;challenging&#8221; following FP2.<\/p>\n<p>Verstappen was seventh and P10 across the two free practice sessions, respectively, whilst Isack Hadjar could only wrangle his RB22 to P13 and P15 at Suzuka.<\/p>\n<p>When it was put to Monaghan that the Dutchman had said it was &#8220;a bit tricky here and there&#8221;, he light-heartedly gave the same response when asked for his own assessment.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;You just have to look at our relative position,&#8221; he added. &#8220;It&#8217;s not the standards we set ourselves, or those that Max sets us.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Elaborating on the difficult situation, with the Red Bull car proving hard to tame, he shared that the six-time constructors&#8217; champions had pinpointed some of the problems.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;So, I think we&#8217;ve identified a few things that are wrong,&#8221; the Briton said. &#8220;Now it&#8217;s a case of, can we confirm it, can we understand it well enough that we can influence it, affect it, cure it, whatever for tomorrow \u2014\u00a0and let&#8217;s see how tomorrow goes. But yeah, today was \u2014 I&#8217;ll describe it as challenging.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Red Bull has developed a sizeable upgrade package to the RB22 this weekend, with a revised sidepod inlet, engine cover and floor being used.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Geometrically, it&#8217;s quite a big change,&#8221; Monaghan explained. &#8220;So thank you to everybody in Milton Keynes for getting it here, because that was a mighty effort.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Our grasping of all of today&#8217;s fun\u00a0is that&#8217;s behaving, but there are some other aspects of the car that are currently not very happy, and those are the ones we&#8217;ve got to try and correct for tomorrow, so we will.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Providing further detail on where the car was struggling around the flowing Japanese circuit, the 58-year-old singled out the sweeping first sector, sharing that improving the balance through corners would be the primary aim for the team ahead of FP3.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Paul Monaghan has conceded that Red Bull is falling short of the standards the team and Max Verstappen&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":351355,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[3518,3521,3519,3522,3520,3517,3515,3513,3516,3514,111,139,69,3512,213],"class_list":["post-351354","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-daniel-ricciardo","tag-f1-calendar","tag-f1-live","tag-f1-results","tag-f1-standings","tag-ferrari","tag-formula-1","tag-lewis-hamilton","tag-max-verstappen","tag-motorsport","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-racing","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/351354","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=351354"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/351354\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/351355"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=351354"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=351354"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=351354"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}