Christian Horner rejects Adrian Newey’s claims that Red Bull’s development struggles in 2024 were due to a lack of experience.
Red Bull team principal Christian Horner has dismissed Adrian Newey’s claims that the team’s development struggles during the 2024 Formula 1 season showed signs of “inexperience.”
The Red Bull RB20 was leading the pack when it hit the track early last year, with Max Verstappen winning seven of the first 10 races.
Some of those victories were dominant, but Lando Norris’s maiden win in the sixth round in Miami signaled that McLaren had caught up with Red Bull in the development race.
Verstappen’s seventh Grand Prix win in the tenth round in Spain was followed by a 10-race winless streak, as Red Bull struggled with balance issues in an attempt to enhance the RB20’s performance.
Newey recently stated, “From what I could see, the 2024 car and throughout the very late stages of 2023, I would say, started to become more difficult to drive,” adding, “From what I can see from the outside, the Red Bull guys – this is not a criticism – perhaps, due to inexperience, just continued in the same direction.”
Asked to respond to these claims ahead of the F1 75 launch event yesterday, Horner said, “I’m not sure I’ve read those comments, but I think the issues run deeper than last year.”
“When you really study the data and some of the characteristics, you start to see them much earlier than that, certainly in 2023. And Adrian was there.”
“It was about breaking them down to understand what the contributing factors to a very high-performance level were. I think that’s where the team has worked very hard to understand and address it.”
Horner was also asked whether Red Bull had addressed the fundamental issues of the RB20 with the RB21.
“I’ll tell you next Friday,” he said, referring to pre-season testing in Bahrain.
“The team has worked very hard over the winter to address some of the RB20’s flaws. I think we’ve had a good winter, and the team has worked incredibly hard.”
“Next week, we’ll get the first indications of whether we’ve managed to resolve some of those issues.”
“We were able to minimize them in the final third of last year, and we’ll see if we’ve managed to take it further in these early races.”
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Horner Dismisses Newey’s Criticism of Red Bull’s Struggles Horner Dismisses Newey’s Criticism of Red Bull’s Struggles Horner Dismisses Newey’s Criticism of Red Bull’s Struggles
