Red Bull Racing’s Italian Grand Prix Qualifying Conundrum: “Something Clearly Isn’t Working”
Following a disappointing performance in Saturday’s qualifying session at the Italian Grand Prix, Christian Horner, team principal of Red Bull Racing, admitted that the team is struggling to understand why its cars performed so poorly. Max Verstappen and Sergio Perez, who had shown promising pace during the practice sessions, faltered in the final qualifying round, finishing a whopping seven-tenths off the pace of their rivals.
“We simply don’t understand that we did a 1m19.6s on scrubbed tyres and then on two sets of new tyres couldn’t do better than 1m20.0s,” Horner expressed his frustration to Sky Sports F1. The Red Bull boss highlighted the team’s inability to improve its pace on fresh soft tyres, citing a fundamental issue with the car’s balance.
Horner pointed out that Verstappen was four-tenths slower in Q3 on new tyres compared to his Q2 time on a used set, leaving the team mystified. “The balance just isn’t there for [Verstappen], so there’s something that fundamentally is happening that we’re not on top of at the moment,” he stated.
Red Bull’s chronic car handling problems have persisted throughout the season, and the team’s set-up experiments at last week’s Dutch Grand Prix failed to yield a solution. “We ran an older specification last weekend to see if that redressed any of the issues at all, and the reality was we still had the same handling characteristics and issues with that specification from the beginning of the year,” Horner explained.
The team’s struggles have allowed McLaren to close the gap in the constructors’ standings, with the Woking-based team now just 30 points behind. Ferrari and Mercedes have also leapfrogged Red Bull in the standings, adding to the team’s woes.
Red Bull advisor Helmut Marko echoed Horner’s sentiments, expressing his “incomprehension” at the Q3 result. “Initially, it looked like McLaren’s superiority was gone here, and then they showed in the third qualifying session that they are on top after all,” he said.
Marko also hinted that the team’s downturn in performance may be linked to the departure of design guru Adrian Newey, who stepped down from his technical role three months ago. “Newey is no longer involved in the whole race [operation], that is a factor,” he conceded.
Red Bull’s struggles in Monza have left the team searching for answers, with Horner emphasizing the need for an “engineering solution to an engineering problem.” As the Formula 1 season enters its final stretch, Red Bull must find a way to address its car’s balance issues and bridge the gap to its rivals.
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