F1 News: Red Bull brought the wrong rear wing to Las Vegas GP

Red Bull drivers lost around six-tenths of a second down the Las Vegas GP straight during Thursday night’s practice sessions. AMuS  confirmed that Red Bull’s rear wing for the race weekend is too “steep”.

So, as a countermeasure, they have to fly in a “flatter”, low downforce-spec rear wing from its Milton Keynes headquarters in England by Friday morning. However, Helmut Marko has commented that it may not be possible for them to do so.

This is not an ideal situation for Red Bull. And both Max Verstappen and Sergio Perez were trying in vain to make the best out of the situation during FP1 and FP2.

Verstappen was fifth in FP1, but over a second off the fastest lap time set by Lewis Hamilton. Meanwhile, Perez was half a second further adrift of his teammate in 10th.

Their situation worsened in FP2. That was perhaps due to the other teams turning their engine power up, or because of a limited number of runs forced by multiple incidents on track. Verstappen was over two seconds off the pacesetter Hamilton. He was down to P17. Meanwhile, Perez finished 19th in the FP2 classification, 2.23 seconds off P1.

Red Bull have put themselves in a precarious situation ahead of Verstappen’s quest to secure his fourth world championship in Las Vegas.