Red Bull managed to pull a comeback against Mercedes’ COTA advantage; the bosses at the Milton-Keynes-based team explain how it happened.
Mercedes were reported to have an advantage over Red Bull before the start of this Grand Prix. However, getting into the FP2, FP3, and Q2 of the qualifying (time of publishing), Red Bull seems at the front.
Seeing the sudden surge, Red Bull now seems to have set their eyes for the win. And the team principal, Christian Horner, explains how they clawed back their way to end Mercedes’ COTA advantage.
Verstappen = P1
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+0.001 seconds
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Perez = P2It’s nearly an identical time between the two @redbullracing drivers 🤯#USGP 🇺🇸 #F1 pic.twitter.com/9ggMoJ65Zz
— Formula 1 (@F1) October 23, 2021
“We’ve managed to hopefully make some good setup changes over the evening,” Horner told Sky Sports F1 during final practice. “You can see they seem to be working. The drivers seem happier with them.”
“We’ve had good support from the simulator overnight. We’ve got Sebastien Buemi racking up the miles back in Milton Keynes around this circuit virtually, so it’s hopefully encouraging.”
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Red Bull car is calm
Horner explains where Red Bull is gaining. He points at the composure, his team’s car showing at high-speed corners. Which also helped Sergio Perez to put in effective timings.
“It seems quite calm on the corner entry. That is what he doesn’t like but I think this calmness in the car is helping to generate that kind of lap time for him.”
“So hopefully we can keep that in the car as conditions change this afternoon because it has been a strong weekend so far for Checo,” he added.
Meanwhile, Horner is not worried about Mercedes’ rear-wings lowering trick, which helps them reduce the drag considerably. The Briton explains that the technique used by Mercedes is not new and would hardly be effective at high-speed corners,
The same method helped Mercedes dominate in Turkey, but Horner doesn’t see any reason to repeat it in Austin.
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