Red Bull’s hopes of finding a more welcoming environment at Monza than the twists and turns of Zandvoort have already taken a worrying hit, with the RB22 showing a deeply unsettling weakness on the Temple of Speed’s high-speed corners.
Friday practice exposed a car that appeared increasingly difficult to tame as the day progressed.
Max Verstappen, making his weekend debut only in FP2 after handing his car to Ayumu Iwasa in the opening session, struggled with braking, rear downforce and severe bouncing after set-up changes, eventually ending the day only ninth-fastest.
Worse still, Verstappen was not even Red Bull’s only driver reporting the problem.
A familiar problem returns
Technical director Pierre Wache acknowledged that the RB22’s troubles bore an uncomfortable resemblance to the difficulties encountered at Zandvoort, where Red Bull also struggled to extract a consistent balance from its car.
"I think that clearly we have a balance issue on the car, that is the main thing," Wache said when asked about Verstappen’s radio complaints.
"It’s a little bit like Zandvoort, to be honest, and we try to understand what the issue is. We try to fix it in a different way by set-up and car components."
©Red Bull
That assessment suggests Red Bull is not dealing with a minor Friday inconvenience. Wache indicated the team may have to reconsider some of the components it has been running in recent races rather than simply make another round of conventional set-up adjustments.
"No, I mean that we will evaluate some components and afterwards we have some choices to make between different components [that we have] since a few races. I think we have to make some choices on that."
The concern was reinforced by Iwasa, whose FP1 outing offered an early warning that Verstappen would later encounter the same fundamental behaviour.
"Yeah, I was saying the same stuff after FP1. Basically the car feels okay on low speed, but on high speed it was quite tricky to drive, like a kind of disconnected car balance," he said.
"Honestly, in FP1, I didn't have many laps, so I didn't reach the limit of the car, but still, I was feeling similar limitations as him."
Max starts weekend on the back foot
The decision to place Iwasa in the RB22 for FP1 was mandatory under Formula 1’s rookie-running requirements, but the timing could hardly have been more awkward for Red Bull.
With Verstappen missing the opening session, the team lost valuable hours of feedback from its lead driver on a circuit where energy management and high-speed stability are already particularly demanding.
"The balance issue is the main thing we’re working on," Wache said. "It doesn't help when Max is not driving during FP1 and jumps in the car for FP2. We have less time to react, but now we have to react for FP3."
©Red Bull
Iwasa also uncovered an energy-management issue during his limited running, although he regarded the discovery as useful rather than alarming.
"Actually we found something that we should not find with our preparation in the lap before the push lap. But that is good, it is a good learning for the rest of the weekend as a team,” he said.
"It was more related to the energy stuff. I think everyone is trying to find a better direction, I think it's part of the game at this track. But it was good because if we didn't see it in FP1, then we might have seen it later on."
Read also: Verstappen offers health update ahead of Monza weekendWache is less concerned about the energy problem than the balance itself, insisting the former can be addressed through normal Friday analysis.
"It should not be [a concern, the energy management problem]. I think it's why the free practice is there, to try and highlight the issue and then to fix it after that," he said.
"I think it's a normal weekend on that aspect, but for Max and for me the main concern is the balance."
Red Bull has repeatedly demonstrated an ability to rescue apparently troubled weekends, but even Wache is refusing to take that recovery record for granted.
"I'm never confident, otherwise you will never achieve anything. But it is what we are trying to do and all the team are working hard to achieve it," he added.
For a team accustomed to finding answers overnight, Monza now presents a particularly urgent question: can Red Bull reconnect its RB22 before the stopwatch delivers a much harsher verdict?
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