Red Bull boss Christian Horner made the surprise revelation that the team’s Formula 1 struggles hark back to the 2023 Spanish Grand Prix at Barcelona.
Horner’s admission is shocking given that Red Bull won every race bar one in 2023.
Fast forward to this term and the team is amid a winless run of seven rounds with Max Verstappen and Sergio Perez struggling with the balance of the RB20.
Horner believes Verstappen’s dominant run in 2023 masked a wrong turn Red Bull made on its development path, that coincided with a poor run of form from Perez.
“We traced the development history back and it turned out that the first mistake we made was with an underbody upgrade in 2023 in Barcelona,” Horner told Auto Motor und Sport.
“That was also the Grand Prix from which Checo started having problems with the car. We just didn’t take it so seriously because Max kept winning.”
Indeed, Verstappen won 10 races on the bounce from Miami through to Monza in 2023 with the Spanish GP the third victory on that impressive run.
Perez meanwhile, suffered a Q2 exit at Barcelona last year and could only muster a fourth-place finish.
The Mexican’s qualifying struggles persisted, limiting him to just five podium results in the ensuing 15 races.
Perez has endured similar struggles this term and hasn’t featured on the podium since round five in Shanghai China.
Now Verstappen has joined him in those struggles.
“Different driver styles can come to different conclusions,” Perez told F1. “The problem was… Well, not the problem – the good thing was that Max was less sensitive to it than I was.
“10, 12 races ago, I was complaining about these issues, but now they are so big that even Max is feeling them.”
More Red Bull issues developed in 2023, says Horner
This isn’t the first time Horner has expressed issues arising with Red Bull’s 2023 car.
“If you go back in the data there were a few races last year where we started to see this, in Austin, and so on,” Horner told the media at Monza.
“It’s a characteristic we know we have to address, and it’s full focus at the factory to do that.”
Things looked more promising on Perez’s side of the Red Bull garage at Baku last weekend.
Perez out-qualified Verstappen, lining up fourth on the grid.
Starting strong, Perez passed Carlos Sainz at the start and stayed within range of leaders Oscar Piastri and Charles Leclerc for the majority of the Azerbaijan GP.
Sadly, the Mexican’s performance came to an abrupt end when he tangled with Sainz on the penultimate lap amid a failed pursuit of Leclerc.
“Spare parts are in short supply,” Horner said after Perez’s Red Bull was significantly damaged.
“We will have to work five days straight at the factory to get the necessary parts to Singapore in time for Friday.”
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