Newey: 'The last couple of races have been very painful for the team'

Red Bull Racing lost the lead in the championship just before the summer break due to bad luck in the last two races. Max Verstappen was the victim of two crashes in Silverstone and Hungary and Sergio Perez crashed out at the Hungaroring.

Adrian Newey is fed up with losing points. In Red Bull's Talking Bull podcast he reflects on the first half of the season. "A lot of pressure, the last couple of races have been very painful for us. Having had that sweet spot through the triple header, then to be taken out in two races and finish with almost zero points out of those has been painful."

Newey continues: "It just highlights how quickly things can change really. From everything looking really good, particularly after the second Austria race and a decent points lead and then two races later we’re slightly behind in both. I think that’s the nature of the tightness of the competition that we’re in. We’ve just got to keep our heads down and keep pushing."

Test in Bahrain was positive

Verstappen is now eight points behind Hamilton. In the constructors' championship, Red Bull is twelve points behind Mercedes. So the battle for the title is certainly not over, but last year was a different story. "It seems like we did the regulation changes on the aero reasonably well. So when we got testing in Bahrain, instantly Max was very complimentary of the car and thought it was a good step forwards from last year’s car."

"So after the Bahrain test we felt like we had a competitive package, but obviously you never know where exactly that’s going to be. In Bahrain, we didn’t win it, but we showed we were competitive", Newey said.