Christian Horner says Red Bull’s unexpected competitive woes at the F1 Singapore Grand Prix were down to a “set-up problem”.
Red Bull’s winning streak of 15 races came to an end at the Marina Bay Street Circuit as the reigning world champions endured a weekend to forget.
Max Verstappen and Sergio Perez could only recover to fifth and eighth in Sunday’s race following a shock double Q2 exit, while Ferrari’s Carlos Sainz claimed the first non-Red Bull victory of the year.
“I think we have got a much clearer understanding, which is primarily a set-up problem,” Red Bull team principal Horner said after the race.
Horner said Red Bull will learn a valuable lesson for their 2024 car after some unforeseen weaknesses of their previously unbeaten RB19 were exposed in Singapore.
“I think that maybe our simulation before the weekend didn’t lead us to the right conclusion,” he explained. “Then you have to sort of unravel your way out of that.
“I think we just ended up in the wrong window and it exposed some of our weaknesses that the car has.
“But it has actually been a very useful lesson for next year, because it gives us some very useful insight and certain things that hopefully we can address in our RB20.”
Horner moved to deny suggestions that a fresh clampdown on flexi-wings and floors had hurt Red Bull’s performance.
“It’s all engineering stuff. There’s no silver bullets in this business,” he said.
“I know all of you would love to blame the TD, but unfortunately we can’t even blame that, because it’s not changed a single component on our car.”
Pushed on whether the team was forced to change any of their components, Horner responded: “No. Zero.”
Horner also drew comparisons to Mercedes’ tendency to struggle in Singapore during their own period of dominance.
“I think the technology involved is so high, and the competition is so high,” he added.
“Occasionally, to have a car that’s competitive across every single venue, in every condition, on every compound of tyre, is a hell of a challenge.
“I think we saw it even with the Mercedes eras of domination that sometimes they come here and struggle. Maybe it’s unique to this circuit that has its differences to others.”
Keyword: Red Bull deny technical directive was to blame as F1 Singapore GP woes explained