Horner: We have to analyze everything and draw conclusions

Christian Horner commented via Sky Sports on the Australian Grand Prix results, which were dismal for the Red Bull Racing team as Max Verstappen retired at the very start of the race and Sergio Perez could not get above fifth place.

Question: Your team rarely has technical problems – what happened to Max’s car?
Christian Horner: Exactly two years have passed since the previous retirement due to a technical failure, and today problems with the brakes arose, and it seemed that they started already at the start of the race. Therefore, when Max described this, he compared what happened to the situation when the handbrake of a car is applied.

This caused him to almost lose control of his RB20 a few times; The problem became increasingly serious and resulted in a fire. Now we need to assess the damage and determine the causes of the malfunction.

Q: When Max got out of the cockpit of the car, it was clear that he was very upset. How did he react to what happened?
Christian Horner: A racer is always upset when he has to withdraw from a race. But Max communicated very politely with the team, because everyone is equally concerned about the derailment. Now it is important to learn a useful lesson and understand why the problems arose.

Still, it is good that after three races we are still leading the world championship, despite this retirement. But we still have a lot to analyze and draw conclusions.

Q: It seems like Sergio Perez also had some problems, and this affected his pace?
Christian Horner: Perhaps he was unaware of what had happened to his car, but the underbody was slightly damaged, causing a significant loss of downforce. The damage occurred when he overtook Fernando Alonso.

Once this happens, rubber degradation worsens. At the end of each segment we simply lost speed, which is unusual for our car. We need to understand what this was related to.

And of course I have to congratulate Carlos Sainz, who won the race today after recently undergoing surgery. Today both he and Ferrari performed simply great!