Christian Horner was very surprised by the difference in performance between Red Bull and Ferrari from one day to the next in Austria, mainly because of the high tire wear of the RB18
Red Bull had to swallow their home defeat to Ferrari mainly because of excessive tire wear during the 71 laps of the Austrian GP, both with medium and hard compounds. Performance was so impaired that Max Verstappen was overtaken by Charles Leclerc on track no less than three times while leading. Christian Horner confirmed that the team is investigating the possible causes for the above-normal degradation.
What surprised Red Bull the most was the difference in performance from one day to the next, as Verstappen won the sprint race on Saturday, even though he was aware that Ferrari was also competitive. The Taurinos' boss admitted that the high rubber wear "was strange." "A week ago at Silverstone, our wear looked pretty decent."
"I believe these tires are quite sensitive, and if you are not in the right window, you can pay the price with degradation, as we have seen with many teams," Horner said. "When we look at the sprint race, we just forced the pace a little bit more at the start and paid for it at the end, but our whole stint was identical to Ferrari's," he continued.
One change from Saturday to Sunday was the rain, even though the Austrian GP was run on a dry track. Horner explained, however, that this factor caused a slight change in temperature, and he further pointed to the cars' heavier weight with fuel for the race.
"We just need to understand why, in this first stint, our wear was significantly worse than Charles and Carlos [Sainz]," added the Briton.
Ferrari confirmed that the tactic used to beat Red Bull was to push Verstappen to the limit from the start, already anticipating that the compounds would be decisive on the Spielberg circuit. Mattia Binotto even said that the F1-75's pace was very close to that of the RB18.
"In terms of tire wear, we had a bit more of an advantage, which was even bigger [in Sunday's race] because we started to put pressure on Max from the beginning. He was forced to increase the pace and wear out the tires," said the Italian.