Red Bull’s warning to McLaren with ‘found the direction’ analysis after F1 2024 ‘low point’

The Red Bull RB20 stripped down in Baku

Christian Horner believes Red Bull have “found the direction” to develop the RB20 as they fight to retain the championship titles in F1 2024.

Red Bull made a misstep with their much-anticipated Hungarian Grand Prix upgrades, which included a new floor, leaving a frustrated Max Verstappen to declare it was “not good enough.”

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Exposing the RB20 to balance issues, Red Bull experimented with the floors before bolting a new design, featuring a revised the tunnel geometry, onto the car for the Azerbaijan Grand Prix.

The team came within two laps of podium finish for Sergio Perez before he efforts were undone by a late-race crash, while one race later Verstappen was on the Singapore podium for the first time in three editions of the race.

Although he was a distant runner-up to Lando Norris, the 18 points he scored on the day mean he still holds a relatively comfortable lead of 52 points with six races remaining.

Horner believes Red Bull have turned a corner.

“We already could see the issues, but I think what Monza really exposed was perhaps some of the root cause, or helped to identify the root cause of the issue,” he told the media in Singapore.

“So I’m taking Monza as the low point and we’re starting to build out of that.”

Addressing the new Baku floor, while it has not led to Red Bull breaking their winless streak which is now up to eight races, the team boss says his drivers have noticed the difference.

“I think it’s good that the drivers are feeling the difference, I think we found the direction. And of course, that then opens up how you develop the car,” he said.

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Although only six races are remaining this season and much of the design team is already working on F1 2025’s RB21, Horner revealed Red Bull could bring new parts to the next race, the United States Grand Prix in Austin.

That, though, has yet to be signed off.

“It probably hasn’t been finalised yet, so there’s a lot of information that is coming out of these events that will influence what’s going on the car in Austin,” he said.

“We’ve got a lot of useful information out of the last two races, but they’re very, very different venues to the sweeping curves of Austin and Mexico. Brazil is a different one again, so it will be interesting.”

He added: “I think that we’re going to fight all the way to the end of the championship. We’re 52 points ahead, with six races to go with a lot of races, a lot of points on the board.

“So there’s a lot of racing still to happen and we’re certainly going to be fighting hard through the next triple-header, and then the final triple-header after that.”

Red Bull hold the lead in the Drivers’ Championship but not the Constructors’, having lost that to McLaren who they now trail by 41 points.

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