Christian Horner reveals Red Bull's biggest weakness that's hurting the car

Red Bull boss Christian Horner has revealed that the team's biggest issue at the moment is a lack of correlation between the tools and the track. The Austrian team had a horror run in Bahrain, where not only did the car appear to struggle for pace, but Max Verstappen also had two sub-par pit stops.

At one point, Verstappen had even dropped to P20 but then made his way through the field. The track layout for Bahrain did not go favorably for the Red Bull, but what also did not go the team's way was the strategy. Expecting higher tire wear, the team had opted to keep two hard tires for the race.

When Verstappen moved to hard tires, it was evident that they were just not the right tires for the car. They were not only slow but also didn't give any grip to the Red Bull driver. As a result, the driver finished the race way down in P6.

Talking to the media, including Sportskeeda, afterwards, Red Bull boss Christian Horner revealed that the team's biggest issue appeared to be a lack of proper correlation. What the tools show and how the car behaves on the track do not match, and that's hurting the team a lot. He said:

“The solutions, with what we see in our tools compared with what we’re seeing on track at the moment, aren’t correlating. That’s what we need to get to the bottom of – why can we not see in our tools what we’re seeing on the circuit? When you end up with a disconnect like that you have to unpick it."

Horner added:

"We have a strong technical team that have produced some amazing cars over the last few years and I’m confident they’ll get to the bottom of this. But it’s literally, the tool isn’t replicating what we’re seeing on track. At that point, it’s like telling the time on two different watches.”

Red Bull understands where the issues are

The Red Bull boss stated that he understood where the issues were with the car, and the team did as well. It would, however, take some time to bring solutions, which would make it easier for the driver to continue to be in contention. He said:

“Ultimately you can mask it a little through set-up, and we were able to achieve that last weekend at Suzuka. But I think this race has exposed some pitfalls we clearly have that we need to get on top of very quickly.

We understand where the issues are, it’s introducing the solutions that obviously takes a little more time.”

Max Verstappen dropped from P2 in the championship to P3 after the race in Bahrain. The Dutch driver is now eight points behind Lando Norris in the championship race.