Christian Horner thinks Red Bull’s poor Italian Grand Prix weekend may have been the low point that helped turn its 2024 season around.
Red Bull’s performance dip hit a new low in Monza where the RB20 was the fourth-fastest car, with Max Verstappen calling his car a «monster» as he became ever more pessimistic about his chances of holding off McLaren’s Lando Norris in the championship.
But the Italy trip did turn out to be a useful data-gathering exercise as Red Bull continued its floor experiments across both cars, and according to team principal Horner, it unearthed the root cause of what had been going wrong with the RB20’s handling.
«We already could see the issues, but I think what Monza really exposed was perhaps some of the root cause, or helped to identify the root cause of the issue. So I’m taking Monza as the low point and we’re starting to build out of that,» he said in Singapore.
Following Monza’s poor showing, Verstappen’s team-mate Sergio Perez was back in contention in Baku on a different set-up to the Dutchman, and in Singapore, Verstappen finished second, albeit a sobering distance between runaway winner Norris.
Those are not the kind of results the formerly dominant team will have been excited about, but at least they indicated that Red Bull has started to turn a corner, with a four-week gap to Austin’s US Grand Prix an opportunity to convert its painful summertime lessons into a more robust car upgrade.
«Obviously the gap to Lando was significant in the first part of the race and we’ve now got the best part of a month to work hard and try and bring some performance to the car in Austin,» Horner said.
«When you consider where we were a couple of weeks ago, I think we have made some real progress. We’ve got a vein of development, and we’ve understood some of the issues with the car. I think we’re starting to address them.
Max Verstappen, Red Bull Racing RB20
Photo by: Simon Galloway / Motorsport Images
«We were better in Baku, we were better here. So, there’ll be a lot of late nights in Milton Keynes.
«The McLaren is the benchmark car at the moment and we have a bit to catch up, but we’ve got the people and the capability to do that.»
Horner said Red Bull’s Austin upgrade hasn’t been signed off yet, but the lead times involved in getting new parts through the design and production cycle means the Milton Keynes factory has been flat out to try and incorporate its latest design solutions into the car that will take it through a challenging triple-header in Austin, Mexico and Brazil.
«It probably hasn’t been finalised yet, so there’s a lot of information that are coming out of these events that will influence what’s going on the car in Austin.
«We’ve got a lot of useful information out of the last two races, but they’re very, very different venues to the sweeping curves of Austin and Mexico. Brazil is a different one again, so it will be interesting.
«Everybody is massively motivated in the team and we’re still fighting obviously for both championships.»