Horner Reveals F1 President Asked Red Bull To Slow Down In First Five Races
F1Wednesday, 28 August 2024 at 15:00
Updated at Wednesday, 28 August 2024 at 15:16
Red Bull Racing team principal Christian Horner stated that F1 president Stefano Domenicali asked him to slow down in the first five races of the season.
Although it is now fair to say that Red Bull already lost 100% of its performance lead over other teams (finishing 22 seconds behind Lando Norris in Zandvoort), it wasn't that way at the start of the season.
In fact, the first few Grand Prix races very much reminded us of the 2023 season and almost scared quite a few fans (who didn't like Red Bull's dominance) away.
In the first five races, the team from Milton Keynes had both of their cars on the podium four times, three times of which they scored one-two.
Speaking to the media at Circuit Zandvoort after the 2024 Dutch Grand Prix, Red Bull's Christian Horner discussed the current situation and revealed quite an interesting ask from F1 president Stefano Domenicali. He said, as per PlanetF1:
It just shows that things can move very quickly. I mean, we were winning races by 20, 25, seconds, and Stefano was asking us to slow down in the first five races. And then it can change very quickly, and that means it can change back the other way as well."
It is suspected that Red Bull made a mistake with one of their upgrades. Helmut Marko even called it a "downgrade" rather than an upgrade in one of his interviews.
The triple world champion Max Verstappen, who finished second, complained that something about his RB20 had changed, but he couldn't identify what. Horner continued:
"We know we've got an issue. You can hear that Max, certainly today [Sunday], he didn't feel that the car was responding to what he wanted."
"I think we've obviously got to be able to manifest that into a setup that works these tires and across all conditions, and McLaren did that with Lando today."
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