Red Bull are on the defensive heading into the Italian GP. The RB20 has been the fourth-fastest car in Monza, with the team failing to unlock more performance. Christian Horner admits that his personnel are still trying to understand their problems, let alone having solutions ready to take to the track.
Red Bull face a fundamental problem with RB20 development
The RB20 reaches its limit
During the summer break, technical director Pierre Wache admitted that Red Bull might have reached their development ceiling.
While these comments were noted at the time, they were not taken as something worthy of alarm. After all, Max Verstappen was still extending the gap to Lando Norris in the standings.
However, it is clear that Verstappen cannot continue dragging the RB20 to the front without improvements. McLaren are making continual progress in establishing themselves as the benchmark, whilst Mercedes and Ferrari continue to take points away from Red Bull.
The defending Champions even resorted to using different specifications last weekend in Zandvoort. Not only did this experimentation fail to yield results, but it demonstrated the team’s increasingly obvious lack of direction.
Christian Horner calls for urgent fixes
Speaking to the media after qualifying, Christian Horner admitted that progress is urgently needed:
“We ran an older spec last weekend to see if that redressed any of the issues at all,” he told Sky Sports.
“The reality was we still had the same handling characteristics and issues.
“So that’s given an awful lot of data for the guys, but a lot to get our head around.
“We need to address it quickly because McLaren have made a significant step over the last few races.
“We’re now behind Ferrari and Mercedes here as well.”
Time running out for Red Bull
Because of the budget cap, teams have very little margin for error when working on upgrades. Any upgrade package that fails to deliver represents a huge waste of time and financial resources.
Teams can only bring a handful of big upgrades throughout a season, and Red Bull’s most recent modifications in Hungary had no significant impact. This was detrimental for several reasons.
The first being that, at a time when improvements were desperately needed, Red Bull stagnated and left the door open for McLaren, Mercedes and Ferrari to progress further.
Perhaps more importantly, substantial resources were invested in the Hungary package. This leaves the team with relatively little to play with for their remaining 2024 development.
Considering that next year’s cars will be a direct evolution from this season, there are also legitimate concerns for 2025.
If Christian Horner’s personnel cannot change course soon, they risk entering next season with very limited certainty about their trajectory.
This could be especially costly in 2025, given that teams will spend next season almost exclusively focusing on development for 2026.
Therefore, in a dramatic turn of events, the reigning Champions are in damage limitation mode. After two years of dominance, Red Bull could spend the next few months trying to prevent their rivals from widening the gap in the development race – rather than leading the pack themselves.
