Alpine junior ‘enjoying’ watching Max Verstappen struggle with Red Bull problems

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Max Verstappen only managed the seventh-fastest time during qualifying for the Italian Grand Prix, after struggling with the balance of his Red Bull.

It has not been the easiest weekend for Red Bull so far after they encountered problems early on Friday, with Martin Brundle noting that the RB20 looked ‘unusual’ as it was not ‘on rails’ as normal.

At the last race in Zandvoort, Max Verstappen noted that Red Bull is now fighting a problem that was not present at the start of the season when he won four races out of five.

Christian Horner said Red Bull is now having to ‘unravel’ their problems, after Verstappen was unable to improve his lap time on a new set of soft tyres in qualifying at Monza.

Discussing their form on the Chequered Flag podcast, Alpine Academy driver Abbi Pulling noted that she was ‘enjoying’ seeing Verstappen struggle after years of dominance.

Abbi Pulling ‘enjoying’ seeing Max Verstappen struggle

Red Bull’s dominance reached new levels in 2023 when the team won 21 races out of a possible 22, setting the record for the highest win percentage in a season.

They beat McLaren’s long-standing record from the 1988 season when they achieved an astonishing win percentage of 93.75% with the MP4/4. With their win at last year’s Abu Dhabi Grand Prix, Red Bull smashed that with a win percentage of 95.45%.

Now they are facing issues as their rivals have caught up, Pulling says she is enjoying watching Verstappen having to problem-solve each race weekend.

“It almost sounds really evil of me, but I’m actually enjoying watching him struggle. Not because I’m a horrible person, but he has had it so easy for the last couple of years,” said Pulling.

“As an athlete, the pressure and challenges he’s had to overcome this year, he’s got to keep trying to pull it out of nowhere. When is it going to end? And we’re sort of seeing the start of it.”

What has happened to Red Bull?

It is difficult to know exactly why Red Bull has gone from having a car that can win races with a comfortable margin to now struggling every race weekend.

While the team has brought upgrades to its car, technical director Pierre Wache has identified three potential reasons why they have not brought the performance benefits they expected.

READ MORE: Everything you need to know about Red Bull Racing from engine to Ford links

Peter Windsor believes ‘something weird’ has happened to Red Bull’s cars this season, having speculated that they were running a brake inertia valve that the FIA told them to take off midway through the season.

While the FIA made a change to the regulations during the summer break to completely outlaw asymmetric braking systems, this was since debunked when it emerged that the governing body was tightening up the rules for 2026 at the request of the teams.