Red Bull engine in crisis? Horner: “70 years of delay from Ferrari”

The great unknown towards 2026

There Red Bull in China with Max Verstappen it dominated to the point that Helmut Marko declared that given the performance of the RB20 it is definitely legitimate for Red Bull to think of being able to set its sights on world titles in 2024 too after having already achieved a double in the two-year period 2022- 2023. The 2024 projects were also fundamental in view of 2025, a season in which the teams will focus on 2026, when everything will change in F1.

Precisely 2026 is the great unknown towards which Red Bull is expected by its opponents. In fact, that season the first engine 100% made in Milton Keynes will debut in F1. Christian Horner has placed strong bets on the last step to transform Red Bull into a 100% independent team, but the challenge is enormous even though the staff hired by Horner is of the highest level.

If a year ago Helmut Marko had put Red Bull PowerTrains in second position in the power unit grid with a view to 2026, now the Red Bull project no longer seems to be in the front row. Regarding the fact that the Red Bull engine project has reached a moment of 'crisis', Horner responded as follows: “We are trying to address the natural growth curve, on engines we are 70 years behind Ferrari – the words of the Red Bull team principal – we have a group of very competent people at work and we are trying to apply the same philosophy to the engine that we apply to the chassis. The engine, however, is a different challenge. Where are we compared to others? No one has any guarantees of where it is compared to the competition, we are talking about a blank sheet of paper. The fact of not having an engine of this generation has both advantages and disadvantages, because obviously we do not have a starting point, nor reliability parameters to 'translate'. Only in 2026 will we actually see if we have achieved our objectives, but if I look at the two years that have passed so far, taking into account a practically standing start, we have already achieved notable results”.