Red Bull reveals: "Were more than seconds faster than Mercedes at the time"

According to Christian Horner a victory for Alexander Albon would have been well possible last Sunday during the Grand Prix of Austria. The team boss of Red Bull Racing reveals that the British Thai was more than a second faster than both Mercedesses in the closing stages of the race.

"We had a tire that was about 1.2 seconds faster than the speed Mercedes was capable of at the time," Horner is quoted by Motorsport.com. After the last safety car there were only ten laps to go. "Alex knew they were going to have problems with their older tyres, so he had to overtake Lewis quickly".

Especially the performance in qualifying was disappointing on the Red Bull Ring. Max Verstappen had to admit with an update on the front wing of the RB16 and a Honda upgrade more than half a second on the Mercedes of Valtteri Bottas. Last Saturday this had mainly to do with the chassis and the set-up, as Helmut Marko already indicated. The qualifying mode of the Japanese engine supplier would have worked very well.

Red Bull analysed

"The parts we were worried about have returned to the factories in Milton Keynes and Japan and we've been going through a lot of data to find out why we weren't as fast in qualifying as we thought," Horner concludes.