Red Bull investigating RB16 "anomalies" in bid to close "significant gap" to Mercedes

Red Bull

Red Bull investigating RB16 "anomalies" in bid to close "significant gap" to Mercedes

Team principal Christian Horner claims the car is "misbehaving aerodynamically"

Ian Parkes

Thursday 23 July 2020 11:33 Updated: 12:39

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Red Bull has launched an in-depth evaluation of this year's car due to it "misbehaving aerodynamically" according to team principal Christian Horner.

Both Max Verstappen and Alex Albon struggled with the RB16 throughout the Hungarian Grand Prix weekend at a circuit where it was expected to perform strongly in comparison to Mercedes' W11.

Following qualifying, in particular, Verstappen and Albon were very critical of the car, with the Dutchman complaining about a lack of balance and top speed that combined to make it slow.

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Although there was an improvement in the race performance, Horner is aware there are issues that need to be resolved ahead of the next round of races, starting with the double-header at Silverstone on August 2 and 9.

"We have some anomalies with the car that aren't behaving as we expect them to and a great deal of work is going into understanding and addressing that for the future races," confirmed Horner.

"We've got something misbehaving aerodynamically. It's a matter of understanding that and addressing that. In certain conditions, the car is behaving as expected.

"We've got some very good data from the weekend, so obviously the team will be working hard to understand and resolve it as quickly as we can."

As to whether Red Bull can close what Horner has described as "a significant" gap to Mercedes at Silverstone, Horner added: "It depends on how much performance we can unlock on RB16.

"We know that we have the fundamental basics of a decent car. It's just not behaving as our simulation tools predict that it will, and we need to understand that and make sure that we are achieving what it should be doing, which hasn't been the case."

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