Vasseur: Verstappen made more mistakes in Imola than previous races

The Monaco Grand Prix last weekend was the latest episode of struggle for Red Bull and Verstappen, which started back in Miami where Lando Norris won the main race.

While Imola also proved to be a challenge, Verstappen won that one, but Monaco was a slap in the face for the reigning Formula 1 Champion and his team as they failed to qualify in the top three, and finished the race in sixth where they started, Sergio Perez qualifying 18th and taken out after a brain fade the Mexican shared with Haas' Kevin Magnussen.

Vasseur, whose number one driver Charles Leclerc won the race in Monaco, was sked by the media after the race on Sunday whether he has noticed some chinks in Verstappen's and Red Bull's armors now that they are under pressure.

He responded: "I don’t want to draw any conclusions based on this weekend, but if you look at the last two or three weekends, I think Max made more mistakes in Imola than in the previous races.

"If you stay in your comfort zone for the strategy, for everything, you don’t do mistakes. But they will be back soon and they will be strong, and I’m not considering at all that everything will be easy until the end [of the season]."

As for the upcoming race in Canada where the kerbs may also pose a challenge for Verstappen's RB20, the Ferrari boss added: "Canada you have almost the opposite to Monaco in terms of speed, downforce, but you also have the characteristics of the kerbs, a lot of low-speed corners and chicanes and so on.

"Some corners are similar to Monaco. But, overall, if you look we were performant in Melbourne, we did well in Imola, in Miami with different types of [tyre] compound, different tarmac, different layout. It will be tight until the end," he explained.

Red Bull have been so dominant since the start of the current era of F1 regulations back in 2022, and took that to a higher level in 2023 when they won all but one race - the 2023 Singapore GP won by outgoing Ferrari driver Carlos Sainz.

Vasseur was quizzed if Red Bull always had weaknesses that only surfaced when they were under pressure, he reasoned: "Last year they had a very decent gap [to the rest of the field].

"Sometimes we were able to fight with them for the quali, but in the race, average it [the gap] was four or five tenths [per lap]. When you have four or five tenths of difference you’re not really at risk. Even if you miss the quali [position], you have this comfort that everything could happen.

"Max pitted in Austria [last year] on the last lap to set the fastest lap because he had one pitstop of gap. In this season this isn’t the case any more," the Frenchman concluded.

Leclerc, after winning in Monaco, is still second behind Verstappen in the 2024 F1 Drivers' Championship, but he closed the gap to 31 points only. Ferrari are only 24 points behind Red Bull in the Constructors' Standings.