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Christian Horner has explained what he believes is the reason why Red Bull Racing has come under pressure from McLaren in both world championships.
Red Bull Racing holds just an eight-point advantage over McLaren with eight races remaining, having once enjoyed a 115-point lead over the Papaya squad.
Max Verstappen remains 62 points clear of Lando Norris in the drivers’ standings, down from 70 points prior to the Italian Grand Prix weekend.
Norris was third in Italy, having won in the Netherlands the week prior. Verstappen’s last win came in Spain in June.
“With the pace we had [it Italy], both championships will absolutely be under pressure, for sure,” Horner conceded.
“We have to turn the situation around very quickly.
“[Monza] exposed the deficiencies that we had in the car versus last year.
“I think that we have a very clear issue which has been highlighted [in Monza] that we know we have to get on top of and address, otherwise we put ourselves under massive pressure.”
Red Bull Racing dominated the 2023 season, winning 21 of 22 races, and enjoyed a strong start to the current campaign that saw Verstappen win seven of the opening 11 races.
However, since Miami, momentum has increasingly swung towards McLaren, while Ferrari and Mercedes have also offered strong challenges at points.
That came to a head in Italy where Red Bull Racing was arguably just the fourth fastest team, leaving Verstappen to suggest the championships are “not realistic” based on his car’s current form.
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The issue, as Horner explains, creates a lack of confidence on corner entry for Verstappen and Sergio Perez.
It’s an issue that can be engineered away, but that in turn leads to other concessions.
“There’s a balance issue with the car that isn’t allowed the drivers to commit to corner entry,” he reasoned.
“As soon as you calm down the rear, you do that by compromising the front, so then you end up with understeer, and then you kill your tyre that way.
“If you look at the McLaren, it almost looks like an evolution of last year’s car, a much simpler car than ours.
“Perhaps we’ve got a little too complex.”
“Running more downforce perhaps hides some of the balance issues that we have,” he added.
“You can see that we’ve got a disconnection in balance that just isn’t working.
“As soon as you end up in that situation, you’re harder on tyres, you end up compensating, you move the balance around [and] you create another [problem].
“You just end up in a vicious cycle.”
While the balance issues with the Red Bull Racing have only recently become evident, Horner suggested they’ve been present in the car all season, and can even trace their roots back to 2023.
“It’s been there for some time,” he admitted.
“Really going through the data, there was issues at the beginning of the tear and the characteristic… I think others have obviously made a step and as we’ve pushed the package harder, it’s exposed the issue.
“Even if you go back in the day, so there was a few races last year where we started to see this, in Austin and so on.
“I think there was some of these issues early in the year, even when we were winning races by 20 seconds,” he added.
“I think the recent upgrade was to put load on the car has disconnected.
“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.”
