Red Bull rivals told "only solution" to stopping runaway champion Verstappen
Former F1 team boss Giancarlo Minardi has insisted the only way to stop the dominance of Max Verstappen is to force the retirement of Adrian Newey.
Newey is the chief technical officer at Red Bull and led the design of the car that has proved to be the cream of the crop with Verstappen at the wheel. The Dutchman has won all but three races this season, finishing first in his last four successive outings.
Red Bull's design chief has been with the team since 2006, having previously been the brains behind championship wins for Williams and McLaren. Newey is renowned for being at the forefront of car design and Minardi believes he is Red Bull's not-so-secret weapon.
The Italian, who brought the team of his own name into F1 in 1985, has admitted that the only way for Red Bull's dominance to be stopped is for Newey to leave the sport. However, that does not seem likely for some time to come.
"In front of such a disarming supremacy in terms of both speed and above all reliability, and the competitiveness of Verstappen and Red Bull, I do not know what the direct rivals can do in the near future. Perhaps the only solution is to retire Adrian Newey," Minardi told The Point.
Greggs, Costa & Pret coffees have 'huge differences in caffeine', says report
"We are faced with two planets: one the absolute property of Red Bull. And then there are all the others who fight to grab the support positions. Max Verstappen is driving with extreme calm, running all the laps within a space of 1-2 tenths of a second.
HAVE YOUR SAY! Who will win this weekend's Brazilian Grand Prix? Comment below.
Red Bull's rivals have been told Adrian Newey will have to retire before the team can be challenged (HOCH ZWEI/picture-alliance/dpa/AP Images)"This time the fastest lap slipped from his grasp, only because they did not expect the final push by Lewis Hamilton. Sergio Perez confirmed he is not alert and calm. He certainly would have wanted to achieve a very different result in front of his public, but despite this “zero” I do not believe his future is far from Red Bull."
Verstappen powered to victory in Sunday's Mexican Grand Prix, finishing more than 13 seconds ahead of second-placed Lewis Hamilton. It was the 16th victory of the season for the Dutchman, a new record, leaving him understandably delighted.
“It’s been another incredible season. The car’s been unbelievable to drive in most places. When you then, as a team, work really well together you try not to make too many mistakes over the whole season, then you can achieve something like that," he said.
“Of course I’m very proud of the achievement because I think after last year when I won 15 I was like, well if I can ever try to replicate something like that I would be very happy. Now we are here with 16.
"Just very happy with everyone’s performance in the team for the whole year, basically not making a lot of mistakes. I think that start definitely made it a bit easier for me in the first stint as well.
"The tyres round here, it’s always very hard to manage but I think we had quite decent pace, then of course we opted to box a bit earlier. It would have been quite interesting to the end to see how much faster I could have gone on the new set of hard tyres, but I think the strategy was looking great."
Read more similar news:
Comments:
comments powered by Disqus
