Dejected Horner sees McLaren, Mercedes and Ferrari go ahead: 'Don't get it'
F1 News
A dejected Christian Horner has been left scratching his head after a disappointing qualifying session for Red Bull Racing in Italy. Max Verstappen will start the Italian Grand Prix in P7, one place ahead of his teammate Sergio Perez. The Red Bull Racing boss admits he simply can't understand it as his team drop behind McLaren, Mercedes and Ferrari.
Verstappen and Perez were struggling with the balance throughout qualifying. On a new set of tyres, the Dutchman couldn't improve and this confused the Red Bull boss.
How Horner reacted to terrible Red Bull qualifying
"We simply don't understand it that we did a 19.6 on scrubbed [tyres] and then couldn't on two sets of new tyres better at 20.0. The balance just isn't there. It's something that fundamentally is happening that we're not on top of at the moment. So we need to obviously understand it and understand why on the older tyre we were able to do that time and two sets of new tyres we couldn't get anywhere near it," Horner told Sky Sports after the session
Horner then tried to explain what happened. "Q2 didn't look too bad, I mean still the handling characteristics that Max has been talking about, but then Q3, there's something missed that the others can all improve on new tyres but we were miles away, so we need to understand that and understand it quickly," Horner added before admitting the team are looking at solutions.
"We're looking at everything. We ran on the spec last weekend to see if that redressed any of the issues at all and the reality was we still had the same handling characteristics and issues with that beginning of the year's spec. That's given an awful lot of data for the guys, but a lot to get our head around and we need to address it quickly. We can see the McLarens have made a significant. Now behind Ferrari and Mercedes here as well."
Horner concluded by saying: "There'll be an engineering solution to an engineering problem," he concluded.
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