Marko: We overestimated overtaking possibilities in Hungarian GP

Marko justified Verstappen's frustration during the Hungarian GP and after finishing fifth, as he admitted Red Bull messed up their strategy while the upgrade they brought for their Formula 1 car, the RB20, was not enough.

While Verstappen would've hoped to take the fight to the McLarens starting on the front row, he ended being undercut by Mercedes' Lewis Hamilton, and lost one more position to Charles Leclerc after clashing with the Mercedes driver while attempting to pass.

"The main failure was that we underestimated the delta you need for overtaking," Marko told the media, including GrandPrix247 after the race in Budapest on Sunday.

"Our strategy was based on the idea that with the right tyre you could overtake like last year, but now there was no way. So looking back we totally overestimated the overtaking possibilities in the race. We thought that it would work with better tyres, but overtaking was almost impossible.

"We consciously accepted this undercut with Mercedes because we thought, as we did before, that we would be faster with new tyres, but we simply couldn't get past Hamilton.

"Therefore we have lost the third place and we also gave back the place after the first lap incident just to be on the safe side. We wouldn’t have beaten McLaren, but it could have been much closer," the Austrian admitted.

Asked if Verstappen was frustrated with his RB20's lack of pace after losing out on pole by 0.046s to McLaren's Lando Norris.

Marko explained: "He was expecting more from the upgrade. 46 hundredths, that's hardly measurable. If he had been at the front, it would have been different.

"And if the race had been better from our strategy with the overtaking tactics, without the incident, if, if, if... but as clear as we were beaten, that's how clear the gap is. We're behind McLaren, but relatively close."

However, the Red Bull Racing advisor is hopeful that the team's latest car upgrade still has more potential and is looking towards Spa this weekend for validation of how good it may be.

"In the race our pace was still reasonable at times, in the first stint we were not so far behind," he responded when asked whether Red Bull's comprehensive upgrade was not enough to close the gap to McLaren.

"I don’t think we would have beaten McLaren today, but we would have been close without the undercut problems. Let’s now see what Spa delivers because that can give a different picture. I think the real potential of the updates can only be seen at Spa," he reckoned.

In the other RB20, Sergio Perez drove a strong race to recover from his qualifying woes as he crashed and was knocked out of Q1, having to start the race from 16th, but finished in seventh.

With speculation surrounding the Mexican's future at Red Bull despite recently signing a contract extension, Marko was asked whether Hungary would change the future of the under pressure driver.

"Perez drove a very good race, the strategy worked well," he said, "and we are sticking to our approach, on Monday after Spa I will fly to England and discuss the procedure with [Christian] Horner.

"Very good. This is what we expect from him," Marko added of Perez' performance in Hungary last Sunday.