Christian Horner doesn’t see Red Bull’s DRS as the key performance difference between them and rest of the F1 field.
Red Bull have dominated the F1 2023 campaign so far and it really now is a case of which driver will take the crown and how much they will win the constructors’ title by. However, of late, it has come to light regarding their performance differential around DRS.
Red Bull seemingly have an advantage of approx 30 kph which is significant advantage over the field. It is not that the DRS zone is aiding them but it is the mechanism on the car which helping the RB19 to be a rocketship in some regards as per the F1 field.
The DRS scenario itself has come in for a lot of praise, but questions have been raised too if Red Bull is gaining an advantage for itself. “There’s a lot of talk about that visually, but I think if you actually dig through the Data, I’m not so sure about that,” said Matt Harman of Alpine.
“I think they are very quick in a straight line generally. So, from what we see, it is not something we are trying to understand in great detail. There’s some things we probably have no clue on, because there’s some things that we do that they won’t have either”.
“But their ability to run their car the way they do is quite impressive. I think that’s certainly an inspiration to us all. So that’s where we are moving towards.” With the growing talk among F1 teams about the DRS of Red Bull, team boss Horner doesn’t see that as the key performance difference.
“I think you’ve got to forget Red Bull in that situation, you’ve got to look across the whole field, and how is how is overtaking going generally?,” said Horner to media. “How much overtaking was there in Miami? It looked reasonable.
“I felt that the DRS was probably about the appropriate length here, it wasn’t too easy to pass, but it was enough that the driver had to make the pass. I think maybe in Azerbaijan, they made it perhaps a little too short”.
“There should be simulation software that’s capable of working that out with the data that they have collectively of the grid. I think it needs to be broader than just looking at Red Bull, the DRS isn’t the difference between our performance at the moment,” summed up Horner.
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