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Red Bull exposed at Silverstone by lack of power

16:37, 09 Jul 2018

byJake Williams-Smith

Christian Horner has admitted that Red Bull was "hugely exposed" by a lack of power at the British Grand Prix. Both Daniel Ricciardo and Max Verstappen struggled to keep up with the front-running pace despite running a compromised race setup.

With the team's factory being based in Milton Keynes, it wasn't the home event the team were hoping for, with Daniel Ricciardo coming home an anonymous fifth whilst teammate Verstappen retired due to a brake-by-wire failure.

Speaking to Motorsport.com, Horner said that the teams' struggles had been down to a lack of power compared to their direct rivals.

"We were just hugely exposed today, in both defence and attack," Horner said.

"You could see at the restart with Kimi, it was a bit like Mexico 2015 the amount of additional power.

"We ran our qualifying mode at the restart versus Kimi's and you can see the difference.

"And at the second restart he had a moment at Stowe yet was still all over Max into Turns 2 and 3.

"The problem with Silverstone now is that it's such a wide-open throttle circuit, you're talking 82% in qualifying full throttle," He added.

"So corners like Copse, Becketts, Stowe – they're not quite the challenge they were in these cars, because everybody is flat through Copse now.

"If you look at the rear wings on the cars, we're running Spa levels of downforce (at Silverstone) and everybody else is running that bit more.

"In qualifying I think every single corner we were quicker than Sebastian (Vettel), but we just hose time down the straights."

Red Bull will be hoping for a better time of it in two weeks when F1 returns to Germany and the Hockenheimring, where they scored a double podium back in 2016.