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horner after sprint shootout in austin

Horner after Verstappen comment: 'No reliability issues'

21 October 2023 at 20:40
  • Olly Darcy
  • Editor

Christian Horner is curious to see whether Red Bull Racing has enough speed to win the sprint race with Max Verstappen later today. The British top man thinks the differences will be small and, moreover, he opens up about what Verstappen would like to see further improvements to his car this weekend.

"We've seen the field get closer together, and qualifying has always been close, so it's always that balance between how you act between one lap and a stint," Horner said of the compromise his team made in terms of the RB19's set-up.

Tuning your bolide aggressively for qualifying has implications for speed in the long runs. Whether Red Bull has managed to find the right compromise? "I think today we will see how that works out," the team boss is referring to the upcoming sprint race. "So it will be fascinating to see - degradation around here can be a factor."

In terms of set-up, little more can be changed to Max Verstappen and Sergio Perez's cars, given the parc fermé. However, adjustments can still be made to the front wing, for example. "There's obviously always things electrically that you can tidy up," Horner adds. "There's some driveability stuff that Max wanted to tune [better] for the race this afternoon. [There are no issues] from a reliability point of view."

Giedo van der Garde also revealed in the Viaplay broadcast that the "problems" mentioned by Max Verstappen were driveability-related. In any case, the Red Bull Racing driver need not worry about the rest of the weekend in Texas.