Christian Horner shares his theory on Red Bull's struggles against McLaren despite several upgrades

Christian Horner believes McLaren's car has a better operating window than the Red Bull RB20. Speaking to media including Sportskeeda after the Hungarian GP, the Briton claimed that their rivals might have been able to optimize their package better than them.

For the last five races, McLaren has had a better car suiting most circuits in comparison to Red Bull. The RB20 has struggled at circuits that require kerb riding and abrasive asphalt. In comparison, McLaren has had both weather and track layouts play in their favor so far. In Hungary, Milton Keynes brought a few upgrades with a new front wing, front corner, rear corner, and an engine cover with changed vents for cooling.

However, the upgrades did not give them a significant performance advantage at the Hungaroring. Horner conceded that McLaren had a pace advantage and a better car. Asked if McLaren has had a better strategy for upgrades compared to Red Bull, Horner replied:

“I think their car is in a better window than ours at the moment. It seems perhaps easier to have a broader window. Our window seems to be very peaky and thats what is making it difficult for the engineers, difficult for the drivers. So I think we have to bring the balance of the car and make that window broader, because its so critical on temperature and all of the relative factors. It is something that the team are very aware of and working very hard.”

Asked how much of a threat McLaren was in the constructors championship, the Red Bull Racing CEO said:

"McLaren have a lot of pace at the moment, they had a big score today. And we need to start scoring points from next weekend onwards.”

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Christian Horner does not feel Red Bull’s upgrades under-delivered in Hungary

Christian Horner feels Red Bull is yet to optimize the best out of the upgrade package and have more performance to extract from them. He reckoned that Max Verstappen was good at optimizing the limitations of the car to his advantage. The Red Bull Racing CEO felt they needed to develop more solutions to improve their car aerodynamically, particularly when it comes to broadening the operating window.

Asked if the upgrades underdelivered, Horner said:

“I think that we have more performance to bring for them, to be honest. So as I said, we need to expand that operating window for the car. So the car is in the right window and qualifies by four tenths across. And then obviously here we missed the pole by less than a tenth. If you listen to the drivers, especially Max, he’s got limitations in the car that he wants or knows where the trick is. Obviously how to translate those issues to solutions, engineering wise and aerodynamically wise is what it is.”

Asked what he would conclude from the upgrades, he added:

“I think now we need to look at all the data, now that we have it and look at obviously where we need to optimise, or what we need to achieve.”

As compared to their 70 points plus margin from before, Red Bull now lead the constructors championship with a margin of 51 points over McLaren. Given that a margin like that can diminish quickly, the Milton Keynes squad will have to optimize the best out of every weekend, with the close competition from McLaren.

Coming into the Hungaroring round, Verstappen was leading the Lando Norris with a margin of 84 points, which has now been reduced to 76. With the McLaren drivers securing a 1-2 finish, the Woking squad is now on an upward trajectory chasing the reigning champions.