“We’ve managed to hopefully make some good setup changes”– How Red Bull climbed back to end Mercedes’ COTA advantage

Tanish Chachra | 24/10/2021
"We’ve managed to hopefully make some good setup changes"– How Red Bull climbed back to end Mercedes' COTA advantage

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.

“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.”

Also read: Toto Wolff unsurprised by Mercedes’ declining popularity among fans

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.

Also read: Lewis Hamilton confesses he wouldn’t have sustained in F1 without Angela Cullen

Post Edited By: Tanish Chachra
Christian Horner Mercedes Red Bull

About the author

Tanish Chachra

Tanish Chachra is the Motorsport editor at The SportsRush. He saw his first race when F1 visited India in 2011, and since then, his romance with the sport has been seasonal until he took up this role in 2020. Reigniting F1's coverage on this site, Tanish has fallen in love with the sport all over again. He loves Kimi Raikkonen and sees a future world champion in Oscar Piastri. Away from us, he loves to snuggle inside his books.

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