Max Verstappen should “rely on his experience” rather than the simulator when it comes to finding the right setup for the Red Bull RB21 in the F1 2025 season.

That is the claim of Red Bull adviser Helmut Marko, who has been left aghast that the simulator sent the team down the wrong path at the Japanese Grand Prix.

Max Verstappen told to ignore Red Bull simulator after persistent woes

Verstappen claimed his first victory of the season at Suzuka last weekend, converting a stunning pole position into a fine victory.

It came after Verstappen could manage no higher than fifth on a “quite difficult” Friday in Japan, where the reigning World Champion admitted “things weren’t clicking as much as we would have liked.”

Red Bull have struggled to access the full potential of their car over the last 12 months, with Verstappen overcoming a 10-race winless streak – his longest barren run since 2020 – to clinch a fourth straight title last year.

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The team’s Japanese GP also followed the pattern of the opening two rounds in Australia and China, where Red Bull struggled in the early stages of the weekend before delivering a strong result.

Marko has pinned the blame for Red Bull’s slow starts on the team’s simulator, revealing the problem first raised its head at the Monaco Grand Prix during Verstappen’s dominant 2023 season.

And he has advised the World Champion to resist being swayed on setup by the simulator and instead work it out for himself.

According to German publication Auto Motor und Sport, Marko said: “Whenever the simulator promises us great lap times, things go backwards on the racetrack.

“That was the case two years ago in Monte Carlo and again this time.

“I told Max that he should rely on his experience rather than what the simulator says.”

Marko’s comments were echoed by Christian Horner, the Red Bull team principal, who declared that no sensor can match Verstappen’s innate sensitivity.

He said: “The best sensor in the car is the driver.

“After three practice sessions, we managed to get the car into its window after all. And then, with Max, it was able to drive to pole position and victory.”

Horner’s latest comments come after he revealed that Red Bull turned the car “upside down” in order to give Verstappen something to work with at Suzuka.

He said: “Without any better debate, Max is the best driver in the world currently, but you’re a team.

“You’re not a driver and a car. You’re one team. You win together, you lose together.

“We’re working very hard. We know that this car has some vices. We know where we need to improve and everybody is working incredibly hard to achieve that.

“I think we turned things upside down this weekend to get a car into a window that Max could make use of and Suzuka is a driver’s circuit.

“But you’ve also got to have a car to be able to deliver and I think credit to the engineering team as well this weekend for giving him something that he could finally work with.”

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Speaking after qualifying at Suzuka, Verstappen insisted that his strong performance does not mean that Red Bull’s woes are over, acknowledging that “clear issues” remain with the RB21.

And he pinpointed through-corner balance as the car’s main limitation, with recent reports indicating that the Red Bull’s aerodynamic bias moves rearwards too quickly when the brakes are released, resulting in mid-corner understeer.

He said: “Honestly, I don’t think it has [anything] to do with the tyres for me at least.

“It’s just the through-corner balance that is very difficult to manage, but we clearly got it in a window where at least it was driveable to push and luckily then it was enough for first.

“But it’s still not [perfect]. This is not suddenly now [resolved].

“I don’t say: ‘Oh, I’m first now, everything is perfect.’

“We still have clear issues that we need to solve. That’s what we are continuing to work on.

“This is a very tough track for the car in general. It’s really high speed, so any little balance limitation that you have can sometimes be multiplied in some places around the lap.

“So probably some tracks might work out a bit better for us and maybe some will be a bit worse.

“But it was clear that up until now, this whole weekend we have been really experimenting a lot to try and find that driveable balance and at least that allowed me to push a bit more.”

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