Red Bull chasing Norris
Red Bull starts again almost 21 seconds late Max Verstappen on the finish line of the Singapore GP. On a historically hostile track, the world champion limited the damage and managed to finish the race in second place, but the gap from the dominant McLaren of Lando Norris cannot help but worry thinking about the last six races of the season. For this reason, one of the decisive moments could be the United States GP in Austin where the RB20 will appear on the track with the long-awaited technical updates. For the team principal Christian Horner it will be the key to understanding whether the Dutchman (and teammate Checo Perez) can return to fighting for victories.
Horner charges the team
“I think for all the teams – Horner said on the podcast F1 Nations – Austin will be a natural time of year to bring some newness. We have something important, but I think Ferrari, Mercedes and McLaren will also have updates. Our goal is to build on the basis of what we began to clearly understand after Monza and bring a car that is well balanced between the two axles to give the driver confidence, but it won’t be easy. The first sector of the Circuit of the Americas is fast, but part of the track was also resurfaced, which adds variables. Plus, it will be a sprint race weekend, so we’ll need to start strong straight away. But the entire team has worked hard to understand the problems and solve them and, hopefully, to remedy the situation already in Austin”.
McLaren 23 seconds behind?
The Red Bull team principal then indicated the performance objective that the team must achieve with the update package: “If we look at Lando’s performance in the first stint in Singapore, we need around 23 seconds. We have started to understand things and find some solutions, but we have a lot to do. Obviously it will depend on how the car responds from a mechanical and aerodynamic point of view, but also on the tyres, which are particularly sensitive this year. Monza decisive? There we saw the first signs of the problem because, when we took the load off the car, the separation between the front and rear axles became evident. And the data we collected on the track was a far cry from what we expected to see from our simulation tools”.
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