Red Bull Racing had a Friday and Saturday that could not have been better in Austria, but it had to leave victory to Charles Leclerc on Sunday. Peter Windsor is surprised that the RB18 performed so poorly in the race. He also suggests that Red Bull may have made a strategic mistake.
"Now what could that be?", Windsor asks aloud in his new YouTube-video after the Austrian GP. "“ Could this be to do with the new tighter regulations on the floors that the FIA are proposing and indeed maybe now in the Sunday race conditions maybe they’re favouring Ferrari more than Red Bull.” The governing body has recently come up with tighter regulations regarding the floor. There were rumours that the floor of RB18 was sagging too much.
At the same time, Windsor does not want to keep suggesting. "Maybe it was a one-off or perhaps it was debris," he said. "Max didn’t talk about any signs of damage on the car but one thing was clear that Red Bull was not the racing car it was yesterday so something happened something changed.”
Red Bull strategy not one hundred percent?
In the closing stages, Carlos Sainz caused a virtual safety car to be deployed. Verstappen, like leader Charles Leclerc, opted for a pit stop and got mediums screwed under his car. The 70-year-old British journalist believes Red Bull may have made a mistake there by being too conservative. After all, there weren't that many laps to go.
"I was surprised red bull didn’t use the soft on Max Verstappen right at the end, what was there to lose, even if the soft had gone off quote early he was still gonna be P3, P2 as it turned out. So again I don't think anything could have been lost there," said Windsor, who believes Adrian Newey may have been cursing inside. "You can imagine now the Newey will be incredibly frustrated to have a car that was good enough to win the sprint good enough to be on pole, was then just blown away by both Ferraris would have been a shock to the system.”