General
Marko: "Unfortunately, Verstappen never really had a chance to drive fastest lap"
Max Verstappen was unable to get close to Lewis Hamilton during the Steiermark GP and also had Valtteri Bottas overtake him in the final stages of the race. In the second half of the race, the Red Bull driver was not helped by a damaged front wing. The Dutchman's tyres were also 10 laps older than that of his Mercedes rival.
During the race, we saw a piece of the wing endplate coming from the RB16 of Verstappen. Red Bull team advisor Helmut Marko believes that hampered Verstappen considerably.
Verstappen had no chance for the fastest lap
After Verstappen lost out to Bottas, he was amoungst a number of drivers who dived into the pit lane for fresh soft tyres which allow drivers to fight for the fastest lap point.
Dr. Helmut Marko tells Auto Motor und Sport that Verstappen was about a second slower than normal. This is also the reason that Verstappen could not beat the fastest lap time set by Carlos Sainz. And there was also another reason for that. “Unfortunately, there was also some traffic. Unfortunately, Max never had a real chance to drive the fastest lap."
However, compared to Mercedes, Verstappen was too short. Especially in the fast corners, where Mercedes is “two to four-tenths faster”. The Red Bull only seems to be able to keep up with the slow corners. "Turns three and four were [Red Bull's] speciality," said Toto Wolff.