Red Bull to test ‘a lot of new parts’ in F1 British GP practice

The Red Bull Formula 1 team is planning to trial “a lot of new parts” during British Grand Prix Friday practice in a bid to better understand its RB16 challenger.

Red Bull team principal Christian Horner revealed his side has been hampered by “anomalies” that are causing its 2020 F1 car to “misbehave aerodynamically” in certain conditions.

The issues have prevented drivers Max Verstappen and Alex Albon from properly challenging Mercedes throughout the opening three rounds of the delayed season, with the reigning world champion squad claiming three comfortable victories so far.

While Red Bull looks to be F1’s second-quickest team this year, enabling Verstappen to turn in a brilliant recovery in the Hungarian Grand Prix to split Lewis Hamilton and Valtteri Bottas in second place, Horner has conceded Mercedes has “quite a lot of pace in hand” over the Milton Keynes outfit.

In an attempt to get on top of its car’s tricky characteristics, Red Bull will run an extensive trial of new parts as part of an evaluation throughout Friday’s two 90-minute practice sessions at Silverstone.

"I think we are still learning, we're bringing a lot of new parts to the car,” Verstappen said ahead of this weekend’s British Grand Prix, the first of two consecutive races to be held at Silverstone.

"They are different parts, to see what works, what doesn't, and where we can still improve.

"I mean this is of course not from one week to the other that it is going to be solved. We need a bit more time for that.

"But, yeah, we're working on it, and we'll just find out by trying it on track as well, to know if we're heading into the right direction.”

The high-speed nature of the Silverstone circuit is expected to once again favour Mercedes’ W11 package, and the Silver Arrows have won every British Grand Prix bar one since the V6 hybrid era began in 2014.

Verstappen said he was bracing for a difficult weekend but is hoping to get within half a second of the dominant Mercedes team.

But the Dutchman dismissed suggestions he is becoming frustrated by the situation Red Bull finds itself in, having been tipped as pre-season title contenders heading into the 2020 campaign.

"You would like to come to the weekend and know that you're going to fight for victories every weekend," he explained. "But at the moment, that is not the case.

"We just try to learn and try to improve and, hopefully, towards the end of the year, or next year, we can be in that position again.

"Of course, it's not going to be easy - they work very hard at Mercedes as well. But if we can make it difficult for them that would be really nice. But it's not that I'm going to sit here frustrated and be angry about it all.

"Sometimes I get a bit upset or whatever, but that's at the end of the day because I want to win and I want to improve and I think everybody in the team has that [feeling]. We all want to win.

"And I think it's good that we are pushing each other hard. So yeah, that's nothing negative.

"Because if I would just sit here and [would say] 'ah, I don't care, you know, I just woke up, [came] to the track, I do my job and go back home, I think that would be the wrong attitude."