(Motorsports news) Red Bull won its sixth constructors’ championship with six races remaining in Japan, adding another entry to the Milton Keynes team’s record book, which it has been rapidly rewriting this year. Horner admitted that losing its streak of consecutive racing victories in Singapore was unavoidable.
While the carrot of an unbeatable season is no longer dangling in front of his team, Horner believes it must maintain “pushing the boundaries” in order to continue “riding the wave” of success for as long as possible, as it will be difficult to repeat. “I think a repeated season like this is, you know, it’s a golden moment for the team,” he stated.
“I believe it is difficult to achieve better than Red Bull is doing. So, I believe Red Bull is riding a wave, and of course, we want to ride it as long as we can. “However, Formula 1 is a fast-paced business.” You see how quickly teams move up and down, and Singapore proves, if nothing else, that there can be no complacency, that we must continue to push the frontiers.”
Horner also paid thanks to the crew members who developed such a dominant RB19, which revealed almost no vulnerabilities and sat at the top of the pile across all speed ranges in the hands of series dominator Max Verstappen. “Last year was a very strong year for us,” he stated.
“But to have kept that momentum, rolling with the challenges that we’ve had is testimony to all the men and women in the team that have worked tirelessly to produce a car as competitive as we’ve had, that the drivers and particularly Max has been able to make such good use of.”
Horner concedes that Red Bull’s results were aided by rival teams’ inconsistency, since the title of second-fastest team seemed to change hands frequently. Instead, despite its success handicap from F1’s aerodynamic testing constraints and its penalty for exceeding the 2021 budget cap, Red Bull remained a persistent factor, prompting the team to be more efficient in its development.
“The field has been shifting behind us. “One week it’s McLaren, the next week it’s Ferrari, and the week after that it’s Mercedes,” he continued. “We’ve been 90% consistent at the front of the field, and the amount of development we’ve done on the car has been fairly limited.”
“Because the regulations are stable, we have the same gearbox on the car, the same chassis largely as last year, so a lot is carried over. The team has done a great job in efficiently developing the car and reducing the weight, and to maintain this kind of performance across the variance of circuits that we’ve had.”
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