Horner challenges Marko’s latest figures on Red Bull’s development, questioning their accuracy.
Red Bull was among the teams bringing developments to Silverstone. The Milton Keynes outfit notably had significant updates around the floor.
According to Helmut Marko, these upgrades were worth… “half a tenth” and “six downforce points.” Quite a precise estimate!
First surprise: despite these developments, Red Bull faced significant challenges against McLaren F1 and Mercedes. And we are only talking about Max Verstappen’s case here.
Second surprise, and once again highlighting the tensions at the top of the Red Bull team: Christian Horner stated that these ‘Made in Marko’ estimates were to be disregarded!
“How would Helmut know that?” Christian Horner commented regarding the alleged half-tenth improvement…
“First off, I think the figure is incorrect.”
“But it’s no secret we have less development time than others and that we are at the peak of the development curve – so we are experiencing diminishing returns.”
This does not mean that Christian Horner is giving up on further advancing this RB20 in the second half of the season, of course… even though it will be challenging.
“There are things we have in the pipeline that, although we are at the peak, still allow us to make gains.”
“And inevitably, when it’s close, it’s those small marginal details that make the difference. And there is some movement at the top indeed. Mercedes was strong last Sunday, McLaren was strong the week before, and we won in Barcelona…”
On the specific case of Mercedes F1, Christian Horner was far from impressed by Lewis Hamilton’s victory and the pace of the Silver Arrows. As if it were the exception that proves the rule?
“If anyone can explain Mercedes’ race pace, good luck to them, because it seems quite erratic.”
“The Mercedes has always been strong in cooler conditions. They seemed to have things under control, and George looked like he had things pretty much in hand. Then Lewis woke up when it started to rain, and the McLaren really came alive and passed everyone.”
“So it depended on what was happening. In those conditions, you would expect Max to also step up, but he was really struggling at that time.”
“And then when the track dried, or started to dry, the pace came back, and we were sometimes six or seven tenths faster than Lewis and Lando with Max.”
For Christian Horner, the only constant in this somewhat crazy F1 is… Max Verstappen, who remains at the top of his game.
“Formula 1 couldn’t be in a better place right now.”
“I mean, if you look at the last five, six races, we’ve had Lewis, we’ve had Lando, we’ve had Max, we’ve had Charles Leclerc. It’s moving all over the place.”
“The only one who has managed to be there consistently is Max.”
Nevertheless, Christian Horner would almost be happy to have seen Lewis Hamilton win an emotionally charged victory at Silverstone! All the more happy because the Mercedes F1 driver is not in the title race…
“I’m sure Lewis’s victory was very popular with the British crowd.”
“We have to congratulate Lewis for winning that race. He’s a deserving winner and, of course, it’s very moving.”
“For any driver, winning a race nine times is an exceptional achievement and doing it here, in the UK, which is obviously very special for him as a British driver, he should be very proud. So we tip our hats to him. He did a very, very good job.”
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