Doornbos questions quality of Red Bull Racing chassis

Red Bull Racing had a not too good weekend in Hungary, which somewhat disguised the second position of Verstappen. The gap to Mercedes was very big and on a circuit that normally the car should be well positioned, the team now had quite a lot of trouble to be really fast. That raises the question if the chassis of the RB16 is actually that good, says Robert Doornbos in his column for Ziggo Sport.

Excuses don't apply anymore

"In the past they always had third parties they could provide as an excuse, such as a Renault engine that didn't perform so well or perhaps a Honda engine that wasn't fast enough. But I don't think there's much wrong with the Honda engine. The focus is on the chassis and the focus is on Adrian Newey."

Normally the chassis was always tip top in order, but now some questions arise about that. You could already see that on the Friday, when the word 'balance' came up quite often. "There were a lot of complaints that the car was undrivable and that could be seen on the lap times and in the rain it wasn't even driveable at all. It looked like a drift car."

No improvement at Red Bull

Doornbos also states that Red Bull Racing is the only team that has not been able to improve on 2019 where Mercedes is one second faster. This was reflected in the qualification of Verstappen, which did not exceed seventh position. This was mainly due to the many corrections he had to make each time he came out of the later curves on the circuit.

"That has to do with handling issues, balance issues. Especially at turn twelve, thirteen, fourteen. Every time he wants to pick up the throttle he needs corrections. The car doesn't turn the way he's used to. Every time he goes on the throttle he no longer has the confidence that the balance, the downforce is there and that he can really rely on the aerodynamics, so he has to make corrections and corrections on such a fast lap just take time. That's what we saw on his lap."

Finally Verstappen finished second of course and Lewis Hamilton had a gap of 25 seconds, which gave him a free pit stop. A gap too big to be really competitive, as Doornbos hinted.