Red Bull hope to ‘inspire confidence’ with Austin F1 upgrade ‘remedies’

Christian Horner has detailed Red Bull’s hopes for their upcoming F1 upgrade package for the United States Grand Prix later this month.

Many teams will introduce their final upgrades at the Circuit of the Americas.

It’s the perfect time to do so, given the four-week gap between Singapore and the USA, as teams look to improve performance ahead of the final stretch of races.

Red Bull has slipped back to second in the F1 constructors’ championship, while Max Verstappen’s lead at the top of the drivers' standings is also under threat following Lando Norris' dominant win in Singapore.

Speaking on the F1 Nation podcast, Horner revealed that Red Bull’s latest update is centred on making the RB20 easier to drive in a bid to instil confidence in both drivers.

“Well I think for all of the teams it’s a natural point in time in the year that all teams will bring something for Austin,” Horner explained. 

“We’re hearing Ferrari have got something sizeable. I think Mercedes, McLaren, they will all be bringing something. Now, I think what we’re looking to do is to build on the understanding we’ve started to really get a clear picture on since Monza - and take a car there which is well balanced between both of its axles.

“It inspires the confidence of the driver. It’s a very different challenge. That first sector is very high-speed. They’ve re-surfaced parts of the circuit as well so that’s another variable thrown in.

“It’s a sprint weekend so you’ve got to hit the ground running. You’ve got to take into account all of those elements. The whole team has been working incredibly hard in understanding the issues, addressing them and getting hopefully remedies on the car for Austin.”

Horner reiterated his previous comments that Red Bull’s issues stem back to 2023, even when they were dominating.

The 50-year-old conceded that Verstappen’s brilliance masked some of the problems that had emerged.

“I think we’ve seen some issues that have been aerodynamic issues that actually when you really peel the layers of the onion back they actually go back to 2023,” he added. 

“I think that Max due to his uncanny ability to drive around problems has been able to deal with it whereas it affected Checo much more. Almost to the point where it was a little like the Benetton in the early ‘90s.

“Michael [Schumacher] could drive that car but whoever else got in it seemed to really struggle with it. Max has that ability to just drive around a car with these sensitivities. We were seeing signs of it in the build of it in Monza but when you took the downforce of, how much it highlighted the disconnect there was between the front and rear axles.

“The numbers we were expecting to see on track were just miles out from where our simulation tools were.”