The 2024 F1 season has seen a three-way battle between Red Bull, Ferrari and McLaren open up, with Max Verstappen giving up victory in two of the last three races.
Fred Vasseur from Ferrari and Jos Verstappen himself, (also Helmut Marko) have been very critical of the path being taken by the Milton Keynes team since the beginning of the season.
Charles Leclerc seen biking home after winning Monaco GP
In fact, the gap may have been shortened in a timely manner at circuits where Red Bull traditionally have more difficulties. Now, with Canada, Barcelona, Austria and Silverstone ahead, some of the tracks the Austrian car have dominated in the last two years, it is expected that normality will resume as the aerodynamic department prepares to introduce improvements to the RB20, as Checo Perez has revealed.
For Christian Horner, there is no marked downturn and it is all about adapting to urban layouts.
“Obviously this race was won on a Saturday and that’s where we had a bad day,” he said on television after the race in Monaco. He added on the suspensions that have been copied by rivals: “We need to understand that, understand what the problems were with pace and kerbs. We saw something like that in Singapore last year as well, so we’ve had another precedent. We know it’s an area of the car we need to work on.
“It was a very static race, the top 10 finished where they started, the red flag effectively ended the race because everyone was going to run to the end of the race, so we have some lessons to take away from this weekend and learn.”
The Red Bull boss is optimistic about the car’s prospects for Barcelona, Red Bull Ring and Silverstone, which will make up the first triple-header of the year following Canada.
“Look, we don’t take anything for granted, but we expect those tracks to suit the car. The car has won five races and a second place in Miami and won the two Sprint races, so it’s not like it’s gone from being a good car to a bad car,” he continued.
Suspension and other details to be checked
Horner added: “In Monaco, we can’t take advantage of our strengths and we need to understand what those weaknesses are and how to address them. I think it’s an ongoing process once you get into the law of diminishing returns and, of course, your approach changes depending on what your weaknesses are.”
Horner acknowledged that the gap has been narrowed, and that does seem to worry him because: “The RB Visa runs on the same suspension as last year and doesn’t seem to have our problems. So we need to understand if it’s something we’ve introduced.”
Horner is referring to whether some of the improvements are interfering with the car’s efficiency when there are jumps, something that didn’t happen to the same degree in 2023, when there were little to no problems.