Red Bull had arrived at Formula 1’s Italian Grand Prix confident that work it had done since its troubled race there in 2024 would put it in better shape.
But the foundations for it pulling off a shock victory against the previously dominant McLaren team were put in place by a critical call that Max Verstappen demanded on Saturday afternoon when it came to car configuration.
A new bespoke Monza wing package had already delivered some promise on Friday, as the Red Bull looked to be in pretty decent shape and McLaren was vulnerable.
Heading into qualifying day, Red Bull felt that if it pushed everything to the limit it could potentially pull something special off – but there was no room to leave any performance on the table.
That is why, for its final runs in FP3, as it worked to nail its qualifying preparations, it switched to an even more extreme version of its low downforce Monza rear wing that it had committed to bringing.
The wing featured an aggressive cut out of the upper flap – clearly aimed at delivering a better top speed even if it meant things would be quite dicey in the corners because it was not producing as much downforce.
On the stopwatch, the wing configuration appeared to deliver the lift hoped for as Verstappen’s previous best effort of 1m19.688 was beaten by two late efforts – a 1m19.513s followed right at the end with a 1m19.498s.
But the step forward in performance did not come without setting off a few alarm bells about whether or not the more extreme rear wing would be good for the race.
Sure, telemetry data showed it had helped Verstappen go between 6-8km/h faster down the start-finish straight, but the car was slower in the middle sector where all the corners are.
Between the start line and the entry to the final corner, with the gains on the straights and the loss in the corners, the difference between the specs was less than 0.05 seconds.
Furthermore, a look at Verstappen's speeds through Parabolica also had him up to 10km/h slower even though he could hit maximum speed sooner after.
The balance also did not feel great, as the lack of downforce meant the rear was a bit more nervous and required Verstappen to try and hang on.
Scepticism
The concern from Red Bull’s engineers was that while coping with the downsides would be possible for qualifying, it would potentially be a bigger problem in the race.
A loose rear end would likely lead to more sliding. This in turn would trigger the tyre temperatures to spike and that then means greater degradation and a drop in performance that could dump Verstappen into the pack.
The safest option, and one that had shown to be quite good on Friday’s long runs, was to revert to the less extreme rear wing that had been run earlier.
As debate raged in the post FP3 engineering debrief about what to do, with some initial scepticism from the technical team, Verstappen stood his ground and pushed hard for Red Bull to commit to the skinnier rear wing.
As team principal Laurent Mekies explained later when asked by The Race about how things played out with the wing call: “While it looked a lot more difficult to get the balance right with that lower level, Max has been very strong and good at pushing us to keep it on the car.
“[He wanted us] to find other solutions to give him the balance back, and the guys did an amazing job in managing that.”
The main tool used to help overcome the balance issue was to adjust wing settings at the front – but it appears the team actually added on more flap to help Verstappen better attack the corners and get more rotation.
It all seemed counter to what a normal set-up approach would be, but Verstappen was adamant he could make it work – and the first step was proven when he grabbed pole position.
Mekies added: “He pushed us into a rather unusual set-up direction and it worked.”
Race pace doubts
The real proof of Verstappen’s call was going to be in the race, however, because if his tyres fell off the cliff then it would all have been in vain. And pre-race predictions did not look great.
Mekies said: “It was good to be less than one tenth of a second ahead of McLaren in qualifying, but all our numbers were telling us that normally in the race, they have a bigger advantage than what they have in qualifying.
“So we were expecting a defence race, and I was trying to work out a scenario on how to defend against these guys. But ultimately we had a pace advantage.”
Mekies thinks somehow Red Bull’s car configuration and set-up approach - allied to Verstappen’s wing choice call and perfect execution on track - helped it unlock something that allowed it to do much better than expected.
“It seems like they have overshot the target,” he said. “It means the car was actually in a much better window compared to other tracks.
“So, if you add to that Max who just did perfection – a perfect weekend. Really such a strong weekend, it put us there.”
What will be interesting now is to see if whatever Red Bull unlocked in Monza can be taken forward to other venues – especially with Verstappen feeling so much more comfortable with it.
“Before it felt like you were a passenger in the car,” he said. “We had some races where it was just not balanced.
"And now, finally, there was more balance in the car and then the tyres also behave a little bit more normal.”
