Christian Horner admits McLaren has ‘better car window’ than Red Bull
Red Bull has lost the development war to McLaren as they currently have the fastest challenger on the grid.
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Christian Horner and Andrea Stella (Via: Imago)
Red Bull has continued to face extreme competition from McLaren mid-way through the 2024 season. Woking has surfaced as the most dominant chassis on the grid this time. Milton Keynes has attempted to implement upgrades to match McLaren’s pace but has failed to overcome them. Hence, Christian Horner admitted that the orange squad had an overall better car.
McLaren scored two race wins while providing fierce competition to Red Bull and the rival teams. Speaking upon Woking’s MCL38, Christian Horner believed that they were in a better car ‘window.’ This was the main reason behind Red Bull’s difficult time overcoming McLaren’s dominant pace in the 2024 season.
I think their car is in a better window than ours at the moment, it’s perhaps easier or a broader window. Our window seems to be very peaky, and that’s what’s making it difficult for the engineers and the drivers.Christian Horner said, as reported by speedweek.com.
Apart from this, Horner noted that Red Bull needed to work on the balance of the RB20. As a result, Milton Keynes has continued to implement multiple upgrades to the challenger with minimal benefits. Regardless, Horner assured that the team was ‘very aware’ of the issues and working hard on fixing them soon.
I think we have to take the balance of the car and make that window broader as it’s so critical on temperature and all the relevant factors. That’s something that the team are very aware of and working very hard on.Christian Horner added.
Christian Horner believes Red Bull has ‘more performance’
Max Verstappen had previously admitted that following up to the highly dominant 2023 performance by Red Bull was extremely hard. Although the RB20 showcased impressive performance in the beginning, the rival teams quickly adapted their ways and overcame the team. As a result, Horner noted that the challenger had ‘more performance’ available.
Horner pointed out that the team had additional performance to bring as they continued to rush upgrades and highlighted the ‘limitations’ of the chassis put forth by Verstappen.
I think we’ve got more performance to bring, so as I say I think we need to expand that operating window for the car. But you can see when you listen to the driver, particularly Max, he’s got limitations in the car that he knows is where the performance.Christian Horner noted.
The 2024 season is becoming extremely exciting due to the enticing battle between the top teams. Red Bull hasn’t faced such fierce competition from rival teams since the beginning of the ground-effect era. Hence, the teams will continue to develop their chassis to overcome one another in the development war down the season.
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Aditya Pandya
(1552 Articles Published)