Christian Horner, Team Principal at Red Bull Racing, has said that the team s lack of performance recently is down to tyres.
Red Bull started the year strongly but have failed to score any points in the past four races and have now slipped to sixth in the constructors championship. Horner has now revealed that the slip in pace is not down to their opponents making greater leaps forward in technology, but that they are handling their tyres better than Red Bull.
Tyres are proving to be the biggest factor at the moment,” Horner explained to Autosport. “Over the past couple of months, Toyota has looked very strong tyre wise in the higher temperatures. It’s not a case of our rivals suddenly ‘bolting on’ more performance. It’s down to tyre usage and they have handled that better than us.
“We have understood why this happened and I feel we can get on top of this situation and return to our earlier form for the final third of the season, hopefully starting this weekend in Spa.”
Horner believes the next race at Spa-Francorchamps should suit the car better than the last couple of tracks.
“Apart from anything else, there are a lot more high speed corners than in Budapest or Valencia. We had a good test in Monza and although that was aimed primarily at the Italian Grand Prix, the results of the test answered several fundamental questions about our package.
“We need to go there and attack the weekend, we need both our drivers to be on top of their game, aiming to finish in the points. At the moment, the section of the grid that includes, BMW, Renault, Toyota, ourselves, Williams and now, Sebastian Vettel, is extremely tight and, as we’ve seen at the last few races, one tenth of a second can make the difference between four grid positions.
“Even with the long lap at Spa, I think we can expect a very tight grid, while the early Autumn weather, the race taking place a weekend later than usual, can add further unpredictability.”
