Max Verstappen denies that Red Bull's upgrades are "specifically designed" to suit the Dutchman, after teammate Sergio Perez claimed that the RB18's development was "going away from me".
After a strong start to his 2022 campaign capped by his brilliant win in Monaco, Perez's performance relative to Verstappen has dropped a notch.
The Mexican has admitted that he feels less comfortable at the wheel of Red Bull's car following an update that ironed out the RB18's natural characteristic to understeer, a trait that served Perez's driving style while it was much less to Verstappen's liking.
"I haven’t been as comfortable with it [the development of the car] as I was in the beginning, let’s put it that way," Perez told The Race.
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But Verstappen insists the RB18's development isn't tailored to his requirements, although his input is always taken under consideration by Red Bull's engineers.
"We always try to make the car faster and whatever they bring to the car you have to adapt to that, and that’s certainly what I’ve been doing," said the reigning world champion.
"I mean, of course I say what I would like for my car in general, but the upgrades on the car are not specifically designed around me. It’s just more pace."
Red Bull chief engineer Paul Monaghan echoed Verstappen's comments. While acknowledging that Perez may have struggled to adapt to his car's latest spec, Monaghan says the Mexican also has tools at his disposal to refine the RB18's set-up for his benefit.
"We haven’t made a deliberate step to make the car less to his liking," said the Red Bull engineer. "It’s not easy to make them go faster.
"Within a fairly constricted set of technical regulations and freedoms, if you find a way to put a bit of pace on, you will often take it if it’s within your financial limitations to apply it.
"So you then go through a process of your research tools, realisation at full size and then evaluation at full size. And if it looks like we’ve put some pace on the car, typically we will keep it on the basis that all your tools say your car will be faster.
"Now, it may be that in deploying the tools, it’s been maybe easier for Max to adopt them. Maybe his set-up is suited a bit more than Checo’s.
"But it’s not as if the car is fixed in terms of its parameters [so] that Checo can’t then revise the set-up to say it’s to his liking again. And it would be foolish of us to not then try and give Checo a method to get more out of it.
"We’re in the race for both titles and we need both cars ideally ahead of the Ferraris and the Mercedes. So we will do everything we can to put the two of them there."
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Weight has been a much-debated topic at Red Bull this season, and efforts are still ongoing to slim down the RB18. But overall, Verstappen is satisfied with his car's evolution, although single lap pace in qualifying still needs improvement.
"I think we are still a little bit… I would say not amazing in qualifying," he said. "But that hasn’t only to do with just the car, we are still a bit heavy.
"So, of course, when all the fuel comes out, that is just a limitation we have, so we still need to lose weight with the car, which we’re working on.
"But that’s why, I guess in the race, it’s a little bit less of an issue because first of all, you cannot push like in qualifying.
"So probably that helps a bit with the way we have the car. And that weight issue with a full tank is a little bit less visible."
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