Red Bull are looking for answers as to why they struggled against rivals Mercedes and Ferrari at the British Grand Prix after Max Verstappen and Daniel Ricciardo finished in a distant fourth and fifth places respectively.
The weekend before in Austria, Ricciardo was able to keep in touch with Valtteri Bottas and Sebastian Vettel throughout the race running in third, even holding off Lewis Hamilton in the closing laps.
But at Silverstone, with Verstappen the lead driver as the Australian fought back through the field having started 19th, though he was able to move ahead of Sebastian Vettel at the start and stay ahead throughout the first stint, once the Ferrari attempted the undercut the superior pace showed as he moved ahead with Valtteri Bottas also simply too quick for the Dutchman as he used the overcut during the pit-stop phase.
What made the lack of competitiveness more surprising is the historic high-speed corners of the British circuit were thought to better suit Red Bull and subsequently allow them to challenge the top two teams in front.
“I think we felt that we were a bit off,” team boss Christian Horner admitted. “I am not sure we got the most out of the car this weekend. We struggled a little bit in the low-speed corners, so there is quite a bit to go and understand, analysis wise, why that is.”
One reason the Briton gave was with the higher downforce of the 2017 cars increasing cornering speeds, engines, the weakness of the Milton Keynes-based outfit, were more important in determining performance.
“Silverstone now, with this new generation of cars, is again 70 percent full throttle for a percentage of the lap. And again, that is quite painful in comparison to our rivals,” he said.
The next race in Hungary is also expected to better suit Red Bull, who won in Budapest in 2014. The team is also bringing what Ricciardo described as “significant” upgrades to the final race before the summer break but Horner was keen to downplay that claim.
“It is all part of the evolution [of the RB13],” he said. “I wouldn’t call it significant. I would say it is again relatively subtle in terms of a constant process of trying to get performance on the car.”
