Christian Horner identifies unseen Max Verstappen trait for Red Bull turnaround

Christian Horner has revealed that Max Verstappen is more involved on the engineering side of Red Bull’s Formula 1 car than ever before, as the team comes to terms with its dramatic slump in performance.

Although Red Bull had been struggling for performance since a quarter of the way into the 2024 season, Verstappen was still able to consistently achieve top results at the back end of last year to win his fourth consecutive title.

However, the pecking order has shifted further at the start of the 2025 season, with McLaren stealing a march on its rivals and Red Bull losing more ground to other top teams.

Verstappen was never in the fight for a podium finish in Sunday’s Chinese Grand Prix and eventually finished more than 16 seconds off the lead in fourth after making a late move on Charles Leclerc, who was nursing a damaged front wing endplate on his Ferrari.

Following the Chinese GP, Verstappen sits eight points adrift of McLaren’s Lando Norris in the drivers’ standings, while Red Bull already faces a 25-point deficit to the British team in the constructors’ championship.

However, Horner says Red Bull is not willing to concede defeat in the tight fight just yet, explaining how Verstappen is working closely with the engineers to drag the team out of its current slump.

“It’s Race 2, you can’t be that defeatist. We are eight points behind in the constructors’ after two races,” said Horner.

“There is everything to play for. If nothing else, last year teaches you that you can start as strong as you like, but it’s about how you finish.

“We have great strength in depth in our team. Everyone in the company knows we have got a bit of pace to find.

“We have tools and the people to do that. It’s about unpicking it. We have the data from today.

"Max is working harder than ever. He’s more integrated with the engineering group that I’ve ever seen.

“He seems to be enjoying that aspect. He isn’t getting super stressed.

“Like any driver, he is impatient for performance but he is working with the engineers saying ‘what about this?’”

Verstappen was unable to put up any fight to the Ferraris of Leclerc and Lewis Hamilton on medium tyres, leaving him sixth in the order in the first stint.

Hamilton dropped behind Verstappen on a two-stop strategy while the 27-year-old also found a way past Leclerc with just four laps to run after doing a better job keeping his hard tyres alive.

While Horner admitted that the RB21 lacked pace on medium tyres, he was more impressed with how the car performed when Verstappen switched to the hard compound for a long second stint.

“That first stint is where we gave away all of the time. Max came into the pit stop 18s behind Oscar, and at the chequered flag he was 16s behind,” he explained.

“On the hard tyre, we were pretty competitive. So we need to understand.

“Maybe we overcompensated based on the degradation that we saw yesterday.

“For sure, we need to find a little bit more pace. Then, life is easier.

“[Max] drove another great race. He passed the Ferraris, he passed Charles. A fourth-place finish is important points we know we’ve got plenty more to do.”