Red Bull’s Christian Horner admits his team risks losing both drivers' and constructors' championships this year if it is unable to find a solution to the issues it faced at the Italian Grand Prix. Max Verstappen’s championship lead over Lando Norris was cut from 70 points to 62 after the Red Bull driver finished sixth at Monza, while McLaren is now just eight points off Red Bull in the constructors' standings. The narrowing margins follow a significant drop in form from the reigning champions at recent races.

Verstappen won seven of the first ten races of the season but has now gone six races without a victory, while teammate Sergio Pérez has not finished higher than sixth at the last ten races. At the Italian Grand Prix, Verstappen finished sixth and Perez eighth, leading Verstappen to saying winning both titles is “not realistic” on the team's current form. “With the pace we had today... both championships absolutely will be under pressure, for sure, we have to turn the situation around very quickly,” Horner added.

Both drivers have complained about the difficulty of finding a “balance” in the car, whereby they can trust the car won't snap into oversteer on corner entry while also ensuring the front end remains responsive enough to get the car turned in through slow corners. At recent races, Verstappen suggested the lack of balance has been introduced to the car this year, but Horner believes it was there throughout the season and is now being exposed as the team tries to push harder with development to remain ahead of rivals McLaren, Mercedes and Ferrari.

“I think it's been there for some time, I think actually really going through the data there were issues there at the beginning of the year in the characteristics, others have obviously made a step and as we've pushed the package harder it's exposed the issue,” Horner said. “If you dig into it there were some of these issues early in the year, even when we were winning races by 20 seconds. I think that recent upgrades, whilst it put [aerodynamic] load on the car, it's disconnected the front and rear, and we can see that. Our wind tunnel doesn't say that, but the track says that, so it's getting on top of that, because obviously when you have that it means you can't trust your tools, so then you have to go back to track data and previous experience.”

Horner said the team was working on solutions and that the time between races would be crucial to delivering to the car as soon as possible. “I think the most important thing is understanding the issue, and I think there are certain fixes that potentially can be introduced, perhaps not to resolve the whole issue, but to address some of it. We've now got a 2-week gap before Baku and Singapore, then another mini-break that we can work in, between Singapore and Austin, so this time now is crucial.”

Max Verstappen’s frustration and anger at the performance of his Red Bull car at the Italian Grand Prix was almost visceral. The world champion is unafraid to speak his mind and he did so to damning effect in Monza, condemning the car as an undriveable monster that might cost him a fourth title. This might be considered hyperbole were it not for the fact that Verstappen has been warning of this for months and Red Bull still have no solution, which suggests the Dutchman may be right and they do have a real problem.

Verstappen qualified seventh in Monza and finished sixth in a race where the winner, Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc, and the two McLarens of Oscar Piastri and Lando Norris in second and third were in a different league, more than 30 seconds clear of the Red Bull. Verstappen’s teammate Sergio Pérez described their car as handling like a boat, about as damning an indictment as any driver can give to a thoroughbred F1 car.

Verstappen still holds a 62-point advantage over Norris with eight races remaining, but his warning that both titles were now “not realistic” given the state of the car seems accurate, especially as McLaren are now just eight points off Red Bull in the constructors’ championship. The scale of this turnabout in fortune is hard to comprehend, doubtless not least at Red Bull. As the season opened, Verstappen won seven of the opening 10 meetings when he was enjoying leads of more than 20 seconds on the field – a canter to the title appeared all but a formality.

Yet what Monza and the preceding five races have proved is that the wheels have come off the machine. Conspiracy theorists have made much of the FIA declaring the use of an asymmetric braking system illegal. It was even reported Red Bull had been using such a system but the team were not, nor does their supposed removal of said system correlate with the downturn in form.

The real issue they have, which has become increasingly clear since it was first noticeable at the Miami GP in early May, is that the car now fundamentally lacks balance. The front and rear are not working in sync, meaning the car’s behaviour is unpredictable and it cannot be pushed through the corners. Attempts to compensate for it in turn create oversteer, which subsequently works the tyres harder creating degradation and grip problems.

The issues that have created this disconnect appear to have arisen as a result of upgrades the team have been bringing in since the lead‑up to Miami. They are not delivering what the data from wind tunnel testing suggested they would, and problems have worsened with each attempt to solve them.

The team have had to try to improve their package because standing still is not an option. Having been so dominant for two years, Red Bull are reaching the limits of how much more they can eke out of the design of the car but are having to push hard to do so because McLaren have surpassed them, and both Mercedes and Ferrari are now snapping at their heels.

Verstappen’s anger is fuelled partly by the fact that he identified this to the team as far back as Miami and feels they did not address it soon enough, or with enough zeal. Worse still it cannot be written off as a track‑specific issue. Pérez said the problems they were experiencing in Monza were very similar to those they had at the previous round in Zandvoort and the two circuits could not be more diametrically different: Monza a low-downforce, high-speed sweep, and the Dutch race a high-downforce series of largely tight corners.

Pushed to find more by the advance of their rivals then, Red Bull have instead found only limitations, as the team principal, Christian Horner, observed: “As we’ve pushed the package harder, it’s exposed the issue.” What concerns Verstappen and the team is that they have still not found a solution: that Horner admitted it was “confusing” them was certainly not the reassurance the world champion wanted to hear.

The team held crunch talks in Monza on Saturday to try to find a way forward but, with Baku and Singapore coming up – neither of which are going to present an easy challenge for their car – they can expect little respite.

Moreover, while Verstappen’s lead is still a healthy advantage it may not be the cushion he requires. While calculations based on Norris beating Verstappen into second at each remaining race made it an unlikely target and only just surpassable, that scenario may no longer be the case.

At Monza the Red Bull was beaten by both McLarens, both Ferraris and a Mercedes. If the trend is towards Norris maximising points against a fourth- or fifth‑place finish for Verstappen, that points differential is going to begin to swing towards the British driver more swiftly, and Verstappen fired that broadside at his team because he knows it.

Max Verstappen has admitted that Red Bull need to “change the whole car” if he is to return to winning ways, as he revealed he was battling an engine issue throughout a disappointing Italian Grand Prix.

After a poor qualifying session saw him start the Italian Grand Prix from seventh on the grid, the Dutchman could only manage to improve one position over the course of the 53-lap race, finishing a whopping 37.9s behind race winner Leclerc.

Red Bull were unable to match the pace of their fellow top teams and carried out a two-stop strategy that did not contribute to boosting their result on a day when one-stopper Charles Leclerc triumphed in front of the Ferrari faithful.

To add to Red Bull's troubles, Verstappen revealed that he had been suffered from an engine issue that played a part in him finishing a distant sixth.

Speaking after the race, he said: “To be honest I wasn’t really frustrated throughout the race, I was just doing my own race. The pace was not there, we had a bad pit stop, I think our strategy was not on point today even though it wouldn’t have changed our position. I think we could have done a better race in general.

“It doesn’t help that you can’t run full power for most of the race with the engine because we had an issue. So yeah, all in all a pretty bad race. [The engine issue] is really bad at the moment and, before Baku, we have a lot of work to do to basically change the whole car.”

The underwhelming result, coupled with Sergio Perez’s P8 finish, has allowed McLaren to close down the constructors' deficit to the Milton Keynes outfit to just eight points with eight races still to go.

Verstappen’s winless streak has now extended to the last six events, leading him to tell Sky Sports F1 that “if we don’t change anything on the car, it’s all going to be bad from now onwards to the end of the season, so we have a lot of work to do”.

“It would still have been a bad race [without the engine issues], but at least maybe you are a bit more competitive,” he added. “We were in no man’s land basically doing our own race.

“It’s part of racing unfortunately. It’s not what I want but we know that this exists as well. We are pushing hard now.”