Red Bull is confident it will avoid a repeat of the tyre struggles it faced in Baku at this weekend’s Austrian Grand Prix.
The Milton Keynes squad believes it has found a solution to the issue that saw its drivers Daniel Ricciardo and Max Verstappen suffer chronic tyre degradation during the European Grand Prix.
The Red Bull was particularly afflicted when utilising super-soft and soft compound tyres which restricted Ricciardo, who qualified second, to seventh, while Verstappen came home in eighth.
A thorough analysis of the issue has been completed which has unearthed valuable information ahead of Red Bull’s home race.
The cause of the Baku struggles has been attributed to a radical set-up change made to close the gap to the front running Mercedes powered cars.
“The focus of the last two weeks has been mainly to understand what were the ingredients that caused that problem,” said team boss Christian Horner.
“As with all these things it’s never one single thing, but a combination of things. Having understood that we will carry those lessons into this weekend.
“We overcompensated the car from Friday to go for qualifying performance and, in generating the tyre temperature for qualifying, we found ourselves outside of the envelope on the first two compounds on a hot track.
“We’ve a reasonable understanding of what happened, but obviously the expectation was not that we would be in so much trouble we on the super-softs or the softs.”
Although confident the team has learned from its tyre problems, Red Bull is expected to struggle for outright pace on the power dependent Red Bull Ring.
“For this weekend, again, the layout of the circuit is very power-centric,” Horner added.
“But the forecast for Saturday and Sunday looks a bit mixed, which could create some different opportunities.”
Horner has however confirmed earlier this week that his outfit is set to receive a second power unit upgrade from Renault, likely to be introduced at the Japanese Grand Prix in October.
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