Categories: F1 News, Reports and Race ResultsRed Bull Racing

Horner annoyed at 'compromised' car

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Christian Horner says Red Bull is not able to show the true potential of the RB11 because the car is always in "a compromised state".

Red Bull was the only team to win races other than Mercedes last year as Daniel Ricciardo took three victories on his way to third place in the drivers' championship. The team itself finished second in the constructors' and was confident of closing the gap to Mercedes this season.

However, problems with the Renault power unit have hampered Red Bull so far, with Ricciardo's sixth place in Bahrain equalling the team's best result of the year as it sits fourth in the constructors' championship. Horner says there has been a clear improvement with the RB11 but the issues faced on the engine side have masked its potential.

"We are definitely making progress with the car," Horner said. "[Bahrain] is probably our most competitive weekend. The problem is we are running the car in such a compromised state that we are not in an optimum window with the car.

"Our top speeds are down, then you end up trimming wing out to try and get somewhere sensible, then that hampers things like tyre warm-up and downforce. We are not in a window with the car where we want to be, but made quite significant progress."

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Andrew Lewin

Andrew first became a fan of Formula 1 during the time when Michael Schumacher and Damon Hill were stepping into the limelight after the era of Alain Prost, Nigel Mansell and Aryton Senna. He's been addicted ever since, and has been writing about the sport now for nearly a quarter of a century for a number of online news sites. He's also written professionally about GP2 (now Formula 2), GP3, IndyCar, World Rally Championship, MotoGP and NASCAR. In his other professional life, Andrew is a freelance writer, social media consultant, web developer/programmer, and digital specialist in the fields of accessibility, usability, IA, online communities and public sector procurement. He worked for many years in magazine production at Bauer Media, and for over a decade he was part of the digital media team at the UK government's communications department. Born and raised in Essex, Andrew currently lives and works in south-west London.