Formula 1 television pundit Karun Chandhok has dubbed Red Bull boss Christian Horner a “master politician” amid claims the team’s wind tunnel is behind its performance issues.
The Milton Keynes-based squad has endured a tough start to the 2025 season, despite Max Verstappen lying just 12 points off the lead in the Drivers’ Championship.
Its car – the RB21 – has been continuously branded a difficult car to drive, so much so that Verstappen’s original team-mate Liam Lawson’s results saw him swapped with Yuki Tsunoda.
Horner has explained that the outdated tunnel is giving conflicting in its results compared with the on-track data, telling media including Motorsport Week in Jeddah that the wind tunnel and the on-track data are not “correlating”, adding that the problem was “like telling the time on two different watches”.
Horner also likened the wind tunnel to a “Cold War relic” to Sky Sports F1, adding: “So, yeah, it doesn’t help, but we’ve got some very bright engineers and aerodynamicists and mechanical designers. I’m sure we’ll figure it out.”
Speaking on Sky’s The F1 Show podcast, former F1 driver Chandhok scolded the claims.
“Every time I listen to Christian Horner’s ‘our wind tunnel’s a relic of the Cold War’ thing, it’s just PR spin, isn’t it?
“He’s such a master politician. He’s the master of deflection.
“I don’t see Racing Bulls complaining about correlation. They use the same wind tunnel. I actually asked a couple of the people at Racing Bulls whether they’d struggled with the correlation. They said ‘nope’.
“It comes back to a Red Bull Racing issue.”
Will new Red Bull wind tunnel give the team some light at the end of it?
Horner’s ‘Cold War relic’ remark is a doubling-down, having previously made the comment in the New Year.
The new wind tunnel will be located on the campus of its Milton Keynes base, having used its current one in Bedford since the team’s inception in 2005.
It had previous F1 tenants in the form of Jaguar – the team Red Bull purchased from Ford – and Arrows.
Horner’s claims do have some foundation, given the wind tunnel was in operation for a long time before any F1 usage, having been built around 70 years ago, and also playing a role in the development of the Concorde.
The team hopes that it will be ready for the 2027 season, with technical director Pierre Wache previously saying that completion was, as of January, three months ahead of schedule.
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