“That’s where our focus is” - Christian Horner reveals Red Bull’s priorities amid rival challenges and major internal upheavals

Christian Horner opened up about Red Bull's developmental trajectory amid turbulent times within the team. The defending champions have not been the strongest team of late, and are in touching distance of McLaren in the Constructors Championship. However, per Horner that is not hampering the team's motivation, but it indeed puts extra pressure on them.

Red Bull started their 2024 season strongly, winning four of the first five races. However, their dominance slowly faded as Ferrari, Mercedes, and McLaren have all made significant progress in the last few races. So much so that the Papayas trimmed their massive Championship gap to the Milton-Keynes-based team to just 42 points.

This indeed put immense pressure on Horner's team, that too amid the news of two monumental figures saying goodbye to the team. After Adrian Newey, Jonathan Wheatley also decided to part ways with the team next year.

However, Horner assured that it did not interfere with the team's motivation to work on the RB20. Speaking about this to the media, Horner said:

"The whole team is still working flat out on this car, because with stable regulations, whatever we learn now is relevant to next year anyway. If you reflect on the first part of the year now, we're over half distance, we've won seven grands prix, we've won two or three sprint races, we're leading both championships".

"But over recent weeks, that constructors’ [lead] has diminished somewhat, and that's where our focus is. One week it’s Mercedes, one week it’s McLaren, one week it’s Red Bull. [Speaking about how times have changed]. Ferrari hasn’t popped up in a while, [but] it keeps moving around."

McLaren is currently the strongest team on the grid, with Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri firing on all cylinders. Whereas Red Bull is struggling with an underperforming Sergio Perez who failed to help them in the Constructors' Championship.

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Red Bull engineer explains the team's decline in pace

Max Verstappen of Red Bull Racing ahead of the Formula 1 Belgian Grand Prix at Spa-Francorchamps in Spa, Belgium on July 28, 2024. (Photo by Jakub Porzycki/NurPhoto via Getty Images) Source: Getty Images

Pierre Wache has recently opened up on his team's pace decline over the last few races. The Red Bull Technical Director revealed that "some" external factors contributed to the team's shortcomings in the 2024 season. Wache said (via Motorsport):

"Some things you can attribute to the correlation [between the wind tunnel and practice]. Our wind tunnel is relatively old and because of our position in the championship, we can run fewer hours in it".

The Austrian team's last victory came in June when Max Verstappen took the Spanish GP win. This is staggering considering that something of this sort took place back in 2020, the season when Mercedes was thoroughly dominant.