Red Bull pace unlocked by elimination of correlation issues

Red Bull team principal Christian Horner has put the team's strong start to the season down to the elimination of correlation issues discovered last term.

The Milton Keynes-based outfit has an unwelcome record of being sluggish at the beginning of the year before clawing back performance as the campaign progresses.

Unlike recent years, however, Red Bull dictated the pace across the season-opening weekend in Bahrain and left disappointed after finishing second to Lewis Hamilton.

“I think last year we really understood where some of our weaknesses were," Horner told Sky Sports F1.

"We managed to understand what our tools were telling us as well, both the wind tunnel and the CFD and some of the correlation issues that we had in replicating what those tools were saying and what we were seeing on track.

“So I think having understood that, the whole engineering team has worked incredibly hard over the winter and hopefully we have got a good starting base that we can then build on over the season.”

Although unable to find a way past Hamilton in the closing stages of the race, Verstappen had taken pole by nearly four-tenths from the reigning champion.

Whilst Red Bull has no doubt benefitted from the downforce cuts enforced over winter, the team has also been given a boost in straight-line speed by Honda's off-season power unit upgrade - an improvement that has left Mercedes team principal Toto Wolff impressed.

Horner added: “Honda, together with ExxonMobil [Red Bull's fuel partner] over the winter have worked incredibly hard and of course they are due to exit Formula 1 at the end of the year and they have brought everything forward that they had lined up for 2022 into 2021.

“It was very ambitious but they’ve managed to achieve all of their targets so they have done a great job.”

Related

More F1 news

Latest F1 news

F1 News Today: Max Verstappen humiliated as Lewis Hamilton issued FIA warning

• 36 minutes ago

FIA take action on out of sorts Lewis Hamilton at Japanese Grand Prix

• 1 hour ago

F1 Qualifying Results: Mercedes on pole as Lewis Hamilton loses out at Japanese Grand Prix

• 2 hours ago

Max Verstappen suffers Red Bull humiliation at Japanese Grand Prix

• 2 hours ago

F1 2026 Japanese Grand Prix weather forecast - latest from Suzuka

• 3 hours ago

Why is Martin Brundle absent from the Japanese Grand Prix?

• 3 hours ago