Did Red Bull car problems cost Verstappen Brazilian GP victory?

Given that a flying Max Verstappen suddenly struggled with "an extreme amount of oversteer" after switching to slicks, did Red Bull car problems cost him the win at Formula 1's Brazilian Grand Prix?

Verstappen was baffled after the race as to why his RB22 felt so different from his charging opening laps - where he'd cut through the field from 21st on the grid to the top five in fewer than 15 laps.

"It was a challenging race," Verstappen said straight after the finish. "The first few laps were very important. I overtook a lot of cars, and actually that first stint on the Inters was really, really strong.

"Unfortunately, after that, I don't know if we picked up some kind of damage because the car felt like the complete opposite to anything that I felt the whole weekend, with some really weird balance.

"Once I got into P2, I couldn't really make any inroads. So, we have to understand what went wrong there."

Verstappen's right that he starts losing time during his soft stints, then in his final intermediate stint, he continues to fall further from Norris, as shown in the graphic below. 

Verstappen said he suddenly had "An extreme amount of oversteer in the car in the high-speed corners, which made it super difficult to drive.

"So, we need to understand if something broke on the car, some kind of aero loss or whatever, because this was not normal. I sit here, of course, very happy with second, but at the same time, I know there was more in it if the car had been in good shape." 

This wasn't just a soft tyre specific issue for Verstappen either.

"Even when I switched back to the inter tyres at the end, the car was night and day different to my first stint, which shows that there is something wrong," Verstappen added.  

Red Bull has suffered from car degradation this year, with Verstappen detecting issues with the car that Red Bull couldn't earlier this year. 

Red Bull team boss Laurent Mekies didn't have an answer to Verstappen's concerns after the race, but he isn't convinced Verstappen had the pace to beat the upgraded McLaren anyway.

"I also think that even if you start P2 say, I think on pace Lando was anyway a bit faster than us," Mekies said. 

"It's a different story if you start P2 because you have all the first opening laps, risk-taking on which Max is unbelievable. But I think they were a bit faster than us today. Is it degradations? Is it pure pace? Obviously, [McLaren] brought another fair bit of upgrade this weekend again. Or is it something else? 

"You may have heard Max being fairly vocal with the car balance once we had switched to dry tyres. From that point onwards, he has been very, very unhappy with car balance, including when we came back to the inters at the very end. 

"So we'll need to analyse what happens there, how much of that is time loss, and whether or not that would have been enough to fight with McLaren."

Verstappen is ever so marginally quicker (half a tenth on average) than Norris in that first stint on intermediates. 

Norris is then quicker on their first soft tyre stint but there isn't actually a huge difference, with Norris only a tenth quicker on average. 

So is there an alternative reality where Verstappen could have won the race from 21st? That was asked by The Race Members' Club on the latest episode of The Race F1 Podcast. 

"I think it would have been too difficult from the back," Jon Noble replied on the Brazil review episode. 

"If Max had started at the front with all the uncertainty of the weather and the way those cars are playing out, I think he could have won it. 

"But I think, ultimately, the McLaren in those conditions as a whole across the race was probably quicker. And there were phases where Max was better and pushing, but tyres were operating differently. 

"We know the McLaren, as we saw in qualifying, was better when more rain was coming down. That McLaren performance seemed to be better relative to the opposition. 

"When you look at the pace of Lando at the very end, although Max complained about potential damage on the car and how bad it was, I don't know if his problems were any different to what many other drivers were facing. Kimi Antonelli talked about a kind of weirdness with the car and it doing strange stuff. George Russell complained of the same thing. Lewis Hamilton obviously had the rears overheating. 

"I think what happened was the inters were behaving in a slightly unusual way with set-up, which was masking a lot of things. Drivers were just confused about what was happening. They were in and out of the window. The balance was all over the place. Track conditions were changing.

"People haven't done a proper race with these tyres in these kind of conditions where it's altering and going with this level of track temperature and the type of layouts. It was all a new experience for everybody.

"So I don't think Max had the car to win from 21st against Lando, who I think today was superb. I think he was probably unbeatable today based on the conditions.

"For the only potential threat to him would have been Mercedes if they hadn't had these balance problems."

So was it the return of Red Bull's aero deg problem?  

"There have been characteristics that as that Red Bull has pitstops, like during qualifying, for example, this degradation issue can happen," Noble explained. 

"It may be related to the fact, and this is becoming more and more common up and down the grid now, that teams have found this very restrictive regulation set, forcing them into ever smaller details to find performance, that there's nothing that can bring a huge step forward anymore. 

"You're very much locked in in terms of what you can do, which means every single component has to try to overcome all the ways the FIA has got these regulations to allow cars to race. They're trying to work against you. 

"So anything that's not perfect is going to affect the airflow, which is going to affect the downforce, which is going to affect the balance. And on a day when the inters are so critical, your car balance between the front axle and the rear axle, if it's not spot on, you can go from where Lewis Hamilton and Max were on lap one, for example, where they appeared to have absolutely nailed the balance. Max kept it together over that first stint. Lewis just went backwards, the rears overheated and he disappeared. 

"It could be a damaged part, could be something mechanical, could be something happened to that car, just affects the airflow a tiny amount, then the balance has gone a little bit, then your tyres are overheating a bit more, then your balance has gone, you're sliding more and you end up in this kind of the circle of doom where the balance is absolutely horrible.

But there's nothing obvious on the data because it's come from the smallest of components."