"You're fooling yourself": Red Bull blasted by Adrian Newey's manager as the team continues to struggle

Adrian Newey's manager and former F1 team owner Eddie Jordan recently highlighted Red Bull's drastic decline in 2024. The team started the season the same as in 2023 when the car was utterly dominant. Max Verstappen secured pole position in Bahrain and won by a humongous margin.

The next race in Saudi Arabia saw the same thing from the Red Bull driver as he dominated once again. Things, however, started to change in Miami when McLaren introduced its major upgrade. The race saw the Woking-based squad close the gap to the front.

Since then, McLaren has continued to make one step after the other moving forward, and Red Bull has done the complete opposite. The last race in Monza was an utter disaster where the Austrian team was 4th fastest in terms of performance while Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri were fighting for a win.

Talking about the team's drastic downfall during the season on the Formula for Success podcast, Jordan criticized the team for persisting with upgrades when things are worsening. Advising Red Bull to go back to the car they had at the start of the season and then rebuild from there, Jordan said,

“What was the setup that we had at the beginning? What was the setup we had when we were winning by 15 seconds and we were cruising? What has changed? Show me the upgrades because sure as heaven these upgrades haven’t worked.”

He added,

“You’re fooling yourself, you’re trying to believe in a wind tunnel that’s obviously given you miscalculations. Let’s go back to where we were and start from there. Make sure nothing gets changed until we can categorically guarantee that it’s quicker. That’s the way I feel about it. It’s now catastrophic."

Eddie Jordan feels Christian Horner has a big job to repair Red Bull's current situation

Eddie Jordan felt that Red Bull boss Christian Horner had a big role to play right now in terms of rallying the troops and bringing the team together. The team has fallen off massively in the last few races, and going from a frontrunner to where it is right now is very concerning. He said,

“Christian Horner has a massive job on his hands because he has to take out the big stick and start cracking it. We all were slagging off Perez but maybe Perez and that car - that’s the speed of the car, and what Max is doing is what Max is able to do. Beyond any doubt he’s the best driver in F1 in my opinion at this moment in time. Therefore, to finish fifth and fourth, or six, whatever it is, it must be killing him at this stage.”

For Red Bull, the Constructors Championship already seems to be long gone at the moment as the gap is down to single digits. There's also the driver's championship that is increasingly becoming more and more interesting as Lando Norris continues to cut down the gap to Max Verstappen.

With no battle yet to have reached a foregone conclusion, it will be interesting to see what the next few races hold for the season.