Red Bull brought a significant upgrade to Hungary, hoping to offset their weaknesses and enhance performance.
Max Verstappen’s weekend-long frustration suggests that it did not deliver the improvement the team had hoped for. After missing out on pole and qualifying third, Verstappen remarked: “With all those updates it’s still not good enough. (…) I was hoping for more.”
He added: “Every track in the last few races, in the fast corners, slow corners, cold, warm, we are defeated on pure speed.”
After a messy race for the reigning champion, the end result was a third consecutive non-Red Bull win on Sunday, with Verstappen finishing fifth. Speaking after the race, team principal Christian Horner acknowledged that Red Bull must understand why, after a promising start to the season, their progress has now stalled.
“I think we need to look at all the data, now that we have it, and look at obviously where we need to optimise, and where we’re not getting the performance that we obviously want to achieve,” he said.
“I think as a team we work hard to continue to improve the car. It’s not static, it’s a team of people back in the UK that are working incredibly hard. It was a big effort to get this upgrade to this race and there are some positives from that.
“And obviously we’ll look to apply that by moving forward. The car is a different specification again next week [in Belgium].”
Horner noted that it’s becoming increasingly difficult for cars to follow once again, an issue that was widely discussed toward the end of the previous regulation cycle.
“Listening to the drivers, particularly the debrief just now, it sounds like we’re getting back towards 2020—not as bad as 2021, but obviously as the cars are becoming more developed they’re becoming harder to follow. So the dirty air is becoming a bigger issue,” Horner explained.
According to Horner, it’s “difficult to say” whether Red Bull is struggling with this issue more than other teams.
“I mean we’ll draw a chunk of analysis out of that race,” he said. “Definitely you could see the middle sector was affected very badly. Whoever was following the car—even when Lando dropped behind Oscar in those last couple of laps—you could see the middle sector dropped off in comparison.”
With McLaren delivering a 1-2 finish at the Hungaroring, Horner conceded that the MCL38 is currently the superior car.
“I think their car is in a better window than ours at the moment,” he said. “It’s perhaps easier or [has] a broader window. Our window seems to be very peaky and that’s what’s making it difficult for the engineers, difficult for the drivers.
“So I think we have to bring the balance to the car and make that window broader because it’s so critical on temperature and all of the relevant factors. That’s something the team are very aware of and working very hard on.”
“McLaren obviously have a lot of pace at the moment, they had a big score today,” Horner added, regarding the threat posed by the Woking-based team in the championship fight. “We need to start scoring big points from next weekend onwards.”
Horner believes there is still “more performance” to be extracted out of the upgraded RB20.
“I think that we’ve got more performance to bring from it, to be honest. So as I say, I think we need to expand that operating window for the car. When the car is in the right window, it qualifies on pole by four tenths in Austria.
“And then obviously here we missed the pole by less than a tenth. But you can see there, when you listen to the drivers, particularly Max, he’s got limitations in the car that he knows is where the performance [is]. The trick is obviously how you translate those issues into solutions, you know, engineering wise and aerodynamically.”
Verstappen recently came under fire for his on-track clashes with fellow drivers—first, a costly collision with Norris in Austria, and now a clumsy Hamilton hit in Hungary—and increasingly tense exchanges with his race engineer, criticisms regarding Verstappen’s on-track behaviour now resurfacing as Red Bull’s dominance has dwindled.
“With stable regulations, the marginal gains, you’re into a curve where the gains are going to become harder and harder to find,” Horner said. “Now, that’s normal, that’s the normal cycle of being in this business for 20 years. That’s what happens.
“It doesn’t mean you accept it. You’ve just got to work harder to find the incremental gains and execute good races and be on top of your game. We know we need to improve in the second half of the year.”
“We’re just going to develop the fastest car we can,” he added, regarding the McLaren threat. “That’s what we’ll continue to do. The drivers’ championship, obviously, Max has a good lead, but that can diminish very quickly.
“Nothing can be taken for granted. The constructors’ championship, 51 points, currently, can diminish very quickly. We’re acutely aware of that and determined to make sure we start having bigger points running again.”
