Red Bull Racing suffered their worst performance of the season in the Italian Grand Prix on Sunday. Max Verstappen, who went into the race second in the standings, suffered an engine failure on lap 31 after the restart, while Alex Albon was in the wars throughout. He collided with shock race winner Pierre Gasly on the opening lap, before later hitting Romain Grosjean, damaging his car and picking up a five-second penalty in the process. He would finish 15th, outside of the points. It is the second race this season that Red Bull have failed to score points - the first coming in the season opener in Austria when Verstappen suffered a mechanical issue and Albon was punted out of a podium finish by Lewis Hamilton. "That wasn’t a fun race and P15 clearly isn’t reflective of our true package," Albon said after the race in Italy. "We had a lot of damage with the left side of the floor missing after contact in Turn 1 and then with the time penalty our race was basically over. We had no grip and lost a load of downforce so it was a long race where we were just limping to the end. "It’s been a tough weekend for us as a Team which we thought it could be and then with the circumstances today it’s just made it a lot harder." For Verstappen, it was his first DNF since the opening race of the season in Austria, and he dropped behind Valtteri Bottas in the championship standings. He said: “I think pretty much everything that could go wrong today did go wrong. I had a very bad start with a lot of wheel spin when I dropped the clutch and from there onwards I was stuck in a DRS train which makes it almost impossible to overtake around here. "After the red flag I had a problem with the engine at the re-start which we tried to solve but it didn’t go away and we had to retire the car which is of course very disappointing. "Now we just have to forget this race and move on to next week at a new circuit we are all excited to visit."
