No major improvements for Red Bull in Imola
According to Christian Horner, Red Bull is not expected to make major changes in Imola, notably due to the sprint format of the weekend which leaves little time for the evaluation of new parts. However, the Austrian team has established its development plan for the rest of the season.
While Formula 1 is returning to European soil at Imola this weekend, some teams will take advantage of this occasion to bring improvements to their cars. Alpine, for example, has planned a new floor, but Red Bull, according to Christian Horner, the director of the Austrian team, does not seem ready yet to make significant changes to the RB18.
I wouldn’t say there is a big package of improvements planned, it’s all part of an evolution. And on top of that, with the sprint race, there is very little time to evaluate these things. There is only one practice session before the qualifying. So, you have to be very confident in what you put in the car, explained Christian Horner.
« I think we learn more about tires and how the car performs, it gives us a development direction. After the first three races, we have already found a good direction to take for the rest of the season’s development. », the boss of Red Bull said with satisfaction.
If the development plan seems well organized at Red Bull, it has been somewhat hindered by reliability issues with the RB18 engine. The power unit supplied by Honda and rebranded as Red Bull Powertrains has shown worrying signs of weakness over the course of a race. Max Verstappen was forced to retire twice, and the other three drivers equipped with the same engine (Perez, Gasly, Tsunoda) did not escape the problems either.
Red Bull is already facing a serious delay compared to Ferrari, which Christian Horner prefers to explain by the head start that Scuderia took in developing their 2022 car last year while Red Bull was fighting for the championship and couldn’t sacrifice 2021. Obviously, they started this project much earlier than us, so to some extent, we are catching up on our delay. But the fact that we are in second position despite the delay is encouraging, and I think we are starting to understand some of the issues we are facing, detailed the British strategist.
