Horner sets Red Bull unusual target with new F1 car

Christian Horner is targeting a more 'user-friendly' new Red Bull F1 car after the struggles with the RB20.

Although it won seven of the first 10 races, and nine overall, the RB20 proved a tricky machine for Max Verstappen and Sergio Perez to extract performance from across the 2024 campaign. 

Whilst Verstappen was able to win a fourth drivers' crown, Perez sunk and scored a meagre 48 points in the final 18 races as the tea axed him in favour of Liam Lawson.

One reason Perez's form was so bad from mid-2023 onwards was that an upgrade introduced at the 2023 Spanish GP proved the wrong direction for the team, with Horner detailing how a further 2024-spec package put the car on a knife-edge as he laid out how the new machine would be different.

"We've got a good understanding of where things weren't [as strong]," Horner told select media including RacingNews365. 

"I would say around Imola we introduced an upgrade that made the car far more peaky in its performance and it became a very narrow operating window. 

"When you got into that window, like the four laps in Austria that were good enough for pole, it was very much in that window, but if you stepped a millimetre either side, it became a problematic car to drive.

"Max was able to mask it and drive around it, and that's where Checo particularly this year [struggled]. 

"The engineers have been very focused on how you broaden that window, not necessarily adding ultimate performance, but just broadening the window so we're across the different challenges and have a much wider operating window."