Christian Horner on Red Bull's Response to McLaren's Performance Surge

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Horner Addresses Red Bull’s Strategy Amid McLaren’s Performance Boost

Christian Horner reassures that Red Bull is not in crisis mode despite McLaren’s recent improvement. Red Bull's team principal, Christian Horner, acknowledges that the team needs to address certain issues to maintain their lead over McLaren. Currently, Red Bull leads the drivers' and constructors' championships by 70 and 30 points, respectively.

Despite this, the team has not won a race in the last five events, and Max Verstappen has expressed concern over their recent performance following Lando Norris’s dominant victory at the Dutch Grand Prix.

In the post-race conference at Zandvoort, Verstappen remarked: "This weekend was just a bad weekend in general. So we need to understand that. But the last few races already, they haven't really been fantastic. So that, in a sense, was already a bit alarming.

"But we know that we don't need to panic. We are just trying to improve the situation. And that's what we are working on. But F1 is very complicated."

However, Verstappen stressed the importance of staying calm and focused on improving the situation without panicking, acknowledging the complexity of Formula 1.

He said: "Based on [the] performance, if it was like that at the next nine races, yes, it would be very, very difficult. But it's the fourth time this year, only the fourth time, that Max's points lead had reduced. It's only Lando's second win.

"But we know we have to find performance. So we were 78 points, now we're 70 ahead. We want to make sure that we extend the lead, not see it continuously diminish.

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"Obviously they made a step a little while ago and their car here particularly with Lando was very impressive. So, we need to understand where and address our deficit."

Horner pointed out that despite McLaren’s progress, Red Bull still has a substantial lead and needs to address their own performance issues to prevent their advantage from shrinking further.

He added: "Well, it just shows that things have moved very quickly. I mean, we were winning races by 20, 25 seconds and Stefano [Domenicali, F1 CEO] was asking us to slow down in the first five races.

"It can change very quickly and that means it can change back the other way as well. 

"We know we've got an issue. You can hear that Max didn't feel that the car was responding to what he wanted. We've obviously got to be able to manifest that into a setup that works these tyres across all conditions.

"McLaren did that with Lando. We weren't able to, but we limited the damage by 'if you can't win it, finish second'."