What’s really going wrong at Red Bull? Just over a year ago, they were being hailed as invincible, winning races with ease as Max Verstappen led the charge. Today, they’re teetering on the edge of the midfield—a reality that’s hard to accept for Christian Horner, someone who deeply loves Red Bull.
As team principal, Horner is naturally the first to face the criticism. And after their disastrous showing at the Bahrain GP, the pressure has only increased.
Verstappen could manage no better than P6, while teammate Yuki Tsunoda finished ninth. For a team that began the season with ambitions of winning the Constructors’ Championship, it was a dreadful result—one that Horner had seen coming. “We knew it would be more difficult for us here,” the Briton said to AMuS following Sunday’s Grand Prix, which gave Red Bull a harsh reality check, just a week after Verstappen’s individual brilliance got them a win in Suzuka.
Today wasn’t fully our race… but we still brought home our first double points of the season ✌️
We’ll regroup, and come back swinging in Saudi
Result : PIA, RUS, NOR, LEC, HAM, Max , GAS, OCO, Yuki , BEA#F1 || #BahrainGP pic.twitter.com/C8qHOXQfRb
— Oracle Red Bull Racing (@redbullracing) April 13, 2025
For the entire weekend in Sakhir, Verstappen kept complaining about a lack of grip with the RB21’s balance all over the place. Horner knows that they aren’t in a good place heading into the last race for the season’s first triple header next weekend in Jeddah. But keeping the long-term goal in mind, he is optimistic about taking the team back to the top again.
“The result clearly showed us what we need to work on,” he said. “Now, with the insights we’ve gained, we can take the right path to find solutions.”
“I believe in our technical team. They’ve proven over many years that they’re capable.”
Unfortunately, luck doesn’t seem to be on Red Bull‘s side either. For a championship-caliber team to fall apart overnight is rare, which hinted at problems back at their base in Milton Keynes. Recent reports have suggested just that.
Correlation issues are affecting the engineers’ ability to match the data on their simulator to the RB21’s real-time performance. “The solutions that we see in our tools do not match the circuit,” Horner recently revealed. He also admitted that the wind tunnel data has not been accurate enough.
As their new wind tunnel won’t be ready before 2027, it’s an issue the team must address with whatever tools they currently have. Otherwise, staying in contention for the Constructors’ Championship—which, at this point, looks like McLaren’s to lose—would be incredibly difficult.
On the Drivers’ title front, Verstappen’s hopes of defending his crown took another hit following his sixth-place finish in Bahrain. He’s now third in the standings, eight points behind leader Lando Norris. Thankfully for him, upgrades are expected in the coming rounds.
Back in Australia, chief advisor Helmut Marko revealed that updates to the RB21 would be introduced within ‘three to five weeks’—meaning they could arrive by the end of April. Red Bull and Verstappen will be hoping these upgrades push them a step forward.
