Verstappen Essential In Helping Red Bull With One Particular Problem Says Horner

Thursday, 26 December 2024 at 13:03

Red Bull Racing's team principal, Christian Horner, described how important Max Verstappen has been for the whole F1 team in 2024.

Following a very strong start to the 2024 season (winning four out of five first Grand Prix races), Red Bull started struggling and lost performance relative to its rivals, who were miles behind up until that point.

For a long time, the Austrian F1 team couldn't quite figure out what was wrong, but what Helmut Marko shared back then was that the data from the simulator didn't correlate with what was happening on track.

Reflecting on this challenging period, the team principal of the Austrian F1 squad, Christian Horner, highlighted Max Verstappen's role in identifying and fixing the issue. He told Motorsport.com:

"It almost felt like something changed dramatically. Suddenly, three other teams became competitive, and we suddenly started to experience some issues that became very limiting."

"Then it was a question of 'and then your tools don't correlate with what's going on on track'. And that's when the driver really becomes a key element."

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Not only did Verstappen keep delivering incredibly strong performances on-track, even winning Emilia Romagna, Spanish and Canadian Grand Prix he delivered the crucial feedback that helped the team fix some of the underlying issues.

"And Max never panicked. Even on the tough days, he spent the long hours with the engineers really rolling his sleeves up and getting stuck in."

"Working behind the scenes on the simulator, spending the time with vehicle dynamicists and aerodynamicists just talking through 'OK, this is where you need to focus, this is where the key issue is with this one,' based on what he's feeling.

"When your tools don't tie in with the circuit, the best sense of that you've got is the driver. And that's where Max was hugely impressive this year – the leadership that he inspired from within the car for the direction that we needed to take to address some of the issues."

After Red Bull hit its low point at the 2024 Italian Grand Prix, the team from Milton Keynes only kept improving towards the end of the season.

Although they still couldn't always match teams like McLaren or Ferrari, it looked like the Austrian F1 team was on the right trajectory again.