Max Verstappen’s hopes of clinching a fourth consecutive drivers’ world championship at the Las Vegas Grand Prix this weekend took a dent on Friday when Red Bull revealed they brought the wrong rear wing.
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In an interview with Auto Motor und Sport, the team’s senior advisor Helmut Marko said Red Bull were losing up to six-tenths of a second on the main straight, the Las Vegas Boulevard leading to Caesars Palace, after a packing blunder.
"We don’t have another rear wing, a smaller rear wing, as we see on our competitors," said Marko. "It would be more helpful, for sure."
He added that it was too late for the team to arrange for a more appropriate trimmed rear wing to be flown out to Las Vegas before the race on Saturday night.
Verstappen leads McLaren's Lando Norris by 62 points with three races remaining and needs simply to finish ahead of him in Las Vegas to become the sixth man to win four world championships.
The Dutchman, however, struggled in second practice on Thursday night, finishing 17th in slippery conditions on the cold, dry and dusty circuit around the streets of 'Sin City' where the three-time champion won last year’s race.
Verstappen tried to make light of the team's error, in packing the wrong rear wing, and blamed his struggle on the slippery conditions and difficulty with tyre temperatures.
"The issue for us is definitely tyre-related as we have no grip and it feels like driving on ice," he said.
"We struggled to make the tyres work, especially over one lap and we were quite far off with the pace.”
Teammate Sergio Perez was 19th in the session topped by Mercedes’ seven-time champion Lewis Hamilton ahead of Norris of McLaren, who said on Wednesday it is "probably too late" to stop Verstappen taking the title.
“There were flashes of speed," said Marko. "We just have to get consistency into it. On the single lap we can improve but on the long run, the tyre wear is a problem at the moment."
He added that conditions may change in favour of Red Bull before the race.
"Tomorrow is a different day," he said. "You see it a lot of times. People will be fastest on Friday, or Thursday, but it doesn't mean that they are fast in the race. We will, for sure, make a reasonable step."