F1 Tech | How Verstappen's risky choice in FP3 allowed him to dominate in Monza
The Italian Grand Prix weekend saw an excellent performance from Max Verstappen, who was able to get both pole and victory, after a positive start to the weekend. During FP3 the Red Bull crew made some “last minute” changes to his RB21, allowing the 4-time World Champion to then dominate for the rest of the weekend. Let’s try to understand what’s behind this phenomenal performance.
Red Bull Racing arrived at the Monza with a series of updates, concerning both wings (particularly important on such a low downforce layout) and small changes to the floor.
For what concerns the small updates on the floor, they mainly concerned the front lower portion of the Venturi channels, but were not visible from the outside. They aimed at improving the flow stability at different ride heights, guaranteeing a good level of downforce generated to make the RB21 more stable in medium and high speed.
Beyond these “invisible” changes, the team also brought specific low downforce front and rear wings to suit the RB21 to the extreme low downforce set-up required at the Temple of Speed:
Since FP1, both Verstappen’s and Tsunoda’s cars were fitted with the extreme low downforce rear wing which was already used in Silverstone.
As shown in the drawing below, this spec is characterised by a very tiny mainplane, that has a flat leading edge to reduce drag as much as possible (yellow arrow).
Moreover, the airfoil’s chord reduces towards the attachment to the endplates, in order to generate less downforce from the wing itself in that area, maximising the efficiency of the car in the straight-line.
Last but not least, this rear wing was matched with an innovatively designed beam wing: as shown by the light blue arrows, the single-element beam wing features a serrated trailing edge, with a chord that gradually decreases as it approaches the endplate, to reduce drag.
For what concerns the front wing, it featured a different top flap design compared to the version used in Zandvoort: as shown in the drawing below, the wing adopted in Holland was characterised by a very long chord top flap, mainly to generate as much downforce as possible on the front axle, not only to give drivers a bit more confidence, but especially to balance the high downforce rear wing adopted.
On the opposite side, due to the very unloaded rear wing adopted in Monza, the team decided to trim the top flap, especially on the innermost section near the nose, to make the RB21 more balanced (pink arrows), while still providing a bit more grip on the front axle to meet Verstappen’s driving style.
All these technical solutions immediately made the RB21 more suited to the Monza layout since FP1, especially on Verstappen’s side.
Also thanks to the small floor changes and to the stiffer suspension set-up adopted, the RB21 looked more stable and balanced through the high speed corners, like Lesmo and Parabolica, while still suffering a bit of understeering in the slow sections of the track (first and second chicane).
Despite this upturn in performance, Verstappen was still losing a lot of time in Sectors 1 and 3 compared to the two Ferrari, who adopted the most unloaded rear wing of the field.
After some usual set-up adjustments following first practice, the Dutchman improved in FP2: despite finishing the session in P6, 0.199 seconds behind Norris, Verstappen showed a very competitive race pace simulation, being the quickest on average on the medium tyre, albeit if he ran less laps than Norris.
This was the first positive sign that the set-up path chosen by the team was the right one, as Verstappen felt confident with the car, despite still not running high engine modes (as usually happens on Friday).
During usual post practice interviews, the 4-time world champion was happy about his first day: “I think we seem a lot more competitive, I'm happier with the car as well. […] Overall it’s been a good Friday for us.”
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The "bold" choice in FP3 got Verstappen closer to the two McLarens
On Saturday’s FP3, after the set-up improvements made during the night, Verstappen’s RB21 was still lacking a bit of performance to get closer to McLaren, around all three sectors: the car, in fact, still showed a light level of understeering in the slow speed sections and a top speed that was still not good enough, despite having used higher engine modes.
As a consequence, after the first run on softs, Verstappen persuaded the engineers to take an extreme decision: they decided to trim the trailing edge of the rear wing, to further reduce drag and make the front end of the car stronger.
As shown in the drawing below, the trimmed version showed a DRS flap characterised by a much shorter chord through the whole section, to reduce drag as much as possible (yellow arrow) and was matched with the trimmed beam wing previously described (green arrow).
The results were immediate: with a few minutes left in the session, Verstappen was able to significantly improve his lap time, getting within 2 tenths of Norris in P1, despite completing the lap on a used set of softs.
During his lap, the performance through the first and third sector drastically improved as well, while the time in the middle sector stayed almost the same as in previous laps, despite the used tyres not offering peak grip.
Together with these changes, the engineers made another crucial decision: to partially compensate for the downforce lost by using a skinnier rear wing, they decided to further lower the car down and stiff the suspension system.
This choice gave made the RB21 even quicker through Ascari and Parabolica, where he was able to make a huge difference compared to other drivers.
The boost of confidence from the path chosen was carried into qualifying, with Verstappen proving to be extremely quick both in Q1 and Q2, before getting pole with a phenomenal lap during the last minutes of Q3, only 77 thousands in front of Norris in P2, proof that he felt comfortable in the car despite the tight margins.
In the usual post qualifying interviews, he described the changes made throughout the day as follows: “It still felt like we were lacking something, and then in FP3 it was a little bit better. Still not where I wanted it to be, so then some final tweaks, and that then brought it a bit closer to what I liked.
"I don’t think the car is ever going to be perfect around here just because of the low downforce feeling anyway. But at least it allowed me to attack corners, have the rotation that I needed at times, and that’s what you want.”
On the other side of the garage, Tsunoda kept using the same low downforce spec adopted since FP1 (shown in the drawing below), which provided more stability on the rear axle and an overall more balanced car, a fundamental requirement to give the Japanese driver more confidence in qualifying and in the race, as an even lower downforce configuration would have been much more difficult to manage especially under braking and traction. This set-up eventually allowed him to get in Q3 for the first time since Spa-Francorchamps, thanks to the higher confidence in the car.
After the astonishing performance on Saturday, there were still a lot of doubts about the race on Sunday: McLaren was expected to be the reference in terms of race pace and, when Norris managed to pass Verstappen for the lead during the first lap, it seemed clear that yet another victory for the Woking team was on its way.
However, Verstappen was able to regain the lead a few laps later, before running away in the distance and eventually winning the race.
Two crucial aspects helped Verstappen get his first win since Imola: for what concerns the tarmac, after being repaved last year, the grip provided increased a lot compared to 2024, preventing graining from appearing on the front tyres, making front tyre degradation less impactful on performance that in 2024.
The same thing happened on the rear axle: despite high temperatures, the tyre deg was quite low, cancelling out McLaren's advantage in terms of tyre management. This gave Verstappen the opportunity to push for 3/4 of his stint on the mediums, setting fastest laps as the fuel burnt down.
Moreover, this kind of performance was also strongly related to the circuit layout: as pointed out by Verstappen at the end of the race, the RB21 behaves better on medium and low downforce layouts, as already happened in Jeddah and Imola this season: “I think it's still a bit track dependent. Here you drive low downforce. It always seems like our car is a little bit more competitive when it’s low-to-medium-downforce. So it's not like suddenly now we are back.”
In conclusion, Verstappen’s performance in Monza was the consequence of a series of positive factors, including the perfect set-up chosen, the track conditions and the low degradation on the rear tyres.
Beyond this, the team was also capable of making a positive step in understating the car’s behaviour, a fundamental act to make the RB21 more competitive also on less favourable layouts.
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