Horner says that Red Bull has to go on the attack
Red Bull boss Christian Horner says that losing the lead of the Formula 1 constructors’ title fight “changes the dynamic” and will see the team “throw everything at it.”
The team had a frustrating weekend, with Sergio Perez in the fight for a podium finish until his collision with Carlos Sainz, and Max Verstappen finishing fifth after struggling all race with a difficult car.
Oscar Piastri’s win and fourth place for Lando Norris saw McLaren move into the lead of the constructors’ table by 476 to 456 points.
“We took big hit in the constructors’ today,” said Horner. “We’ve got 20 points as a deficit now, so we’ve got to attack.
“And we’ve still got seven races to go, three sprint races to go. There’s a lot of points up for grabs, and a lot of different circuits coming up. So it’s far from over.”
He added: “We’re pushing hard. We’re now not defending, we’re chasing. So it changes the dynamic again, and we’re just going to throw everything at it.
“It’s frustrating, particularly after where Lando qualified, that we didn’t beat him today, but thankfully, he hasn’t scored big points. But we’ve got to build on what we’ve learned already, and there’s still a lot of racing to do.”
The team improved the RB20 with a floor upgrade for Baku, and while Perez benefited Verstappen took a wrong turn on set-up heading into qualifying.
“I think there’ll be a big post mortem to see what the variances between the two cars are, which are obviously reasonably subtle,” said Horner.
“But he was not as comfortable as Checo was today. So obviously we need to get into that, to understand why.
“I think if you take the positives out of this weekend, Sergio was in contention with a victory throughout the race. And I think if we can build on that, and extract more performance, there’s no reason why we can’t be competitive in Singapore.”
Horner blamed Sainz for the crash that robbed Perez of his shot at a top three result.
“Frustrating because with Checo, he certainly should have been on the podium, at the very least,” he said.
“In third place, probably second. I think actually he could have won that race, had it not been for he lost a lot of time behind Alex Albon initially, and then Lando whilst he was on new tyres, and Oscar was still out on the old tyres.
“Lando backed him up, which allowed Oscar to keep track position. I think without that, we would have been ahead of Oscar, and then he would have passed Leclerc, and he would have been fine. So, hugely frustrating.
“I’ve just watched the incident several times, and you can quite clearly see that Carlos if you take the wall as a reference and the white line on the right hand side of the track.
“You see him look in his mirror, and just drift to the left. So knowing that he was there. And Checo doesn’t move left or right. So hugely frustrating to lose that.”
Horner was keen to praise Perez, who has had a difficult 2024 season thus far.
“I thought he was super,” he said. “I thought Checo had a very strong weekend, and he had great pace throughout that race. I mean, to sit on the tail of that for the entire Grand Prix distance.
“He was on the pace throughout the weekend, and just a great shame for him not to have capitalised with a podium which has been costly in constructors’ points and in crash damage.”
Adam Cooper F1 