Christian Horner has acknowledged that Red Bull’s car development increasingly gravitated towards Max Verstappen’s demanding driving style, helping explain why Sergio Perez and other team-mates struggled to match the Dutchman. Speaking on the High Performance podcast on 18 October, the former Red Bull team principal also revealed that Verstappen initially disliked the 2022 car, which had been developed with characteristics more suited to Alex Albon’s driving style.
Horner’s comments offer a revealing insight into a long-running debate about whether Red Bull’s cars have been tailored to Verstappen. While Horner has previously resisted the suggestion that the team deliberately designed its cars around one driver, his latest explanation acknowledges that Verstappen’s exceptional ability to extract performance from a car with aggressive front-end characteristics has influenced the direction of development.
The discussion also sheds new light on Perez’s struggles during his time alongside Verstappen, with Horner admitting that a performance gap remained even when the Mexican was doing an excellent job.
The full discussion is available on the High Performance podcast on YouTube.
Horner explains why Red Bull’s development followed Verstappen’s driving style
Horner traced the shift towards Verstappen’s preferred characteristics back to 2018, when the Dutchman and Daniel Ricciardo were still closely matched.
He explained that Verstappen possesses an unusual ability to demand increasingly high levels of front-end grip while managing an unstable rear end, something that other drivers can find difficult to handle.
“Max is tremendously demanding for what he wants,” Horner said. “He has a skill that is abnormal […] that he can just take — he demands more and more front end from the car and he can just cope with whatever the rear does.”
That ability, Horner explained, naturally influenced the engineering team’s priorities as it sought to give Verstappen the car he needed to win.
“In pursuit of that goal, to give him that tool, inevitably your engineering department, your tools, your development focus goes down the route of creating that characteristic in a car,” he added.
Horner did not describe this as a deliberate attempt to disadvantage Verstappen’s team-mates. Instead, he presented it as a natural consequence of a championship-winning team developing its machinery around the driver it believes can deliver the strongest results.
“Of course any engineering team will gravitate just naturally towards their fastest driver,” he explained.
Would you like to see more TJ13 Formula 1 coverage? Add us to your favourites list on Google to receive trusted F1 news.
The 2022 Red Bull was initially better suited to Perez and Ricciardo
One of Horner’s most significant revelations concerned the RB18, Red Bull’s car for the 2022 season. He explained that Albon had played an important role in its development during 2021, when the team’s attention was largely focused on its title fight with Mercedes.
“Alex Albon did a hell of a job in the background developing the 22 car because so much focus was on the 21 car,” Horner recalled.
However, the resulting car reflected Albon’s more conventional driving style, which Horner suggested was closer to that of Perez and Ricciardo.
“And Alex had developed that car and it was very much around his style of driving, which [was a] much more classic way of driving that was probably more akin to a Sergio or a Daniel.”
That became apparent at the beginning of 2022, when Verstappen struggled with the RB18’s handling characteristics while Perez was more comfortable with its predictability.
“If you remember that Max hated the car. It had too much understeer in the car,” Horner said.
The early-season situation was consequently different from what followed. Verstappen and Perez each won a race during the opening three rounds, before the Dutchman established a decisive advantage as Red Bull developed the RB18 throughout the campaign.
Horner also recalled a meeting with Verstappen’s management in Baku in 2022, when he was challenged over the direction of the car’s development.
“I remember sitting down with Max’s management around Azerbaijan that year and them saying, ‘Look, you’ve developed this car around Checo. It needs to have you need to be following what Max needs.’”
The exchange highlights how the car’s characteristics became a subject of discussion inside Red Bull, even before Verstappen went on to dominate the championship.
Horner acknowledges the performance gap between Verstappen and Perez
Horner’s most telling admission came when discussing the difference between what Verstappen and his team-mates could extract from the same machinery.
He acknowledged that Red Bull’s development approach had been influenced by the Dutchman’s abilities, while also conceding that the team’s technical tools had not always been sufficiently reliable.
“I think it exposed some of the weaknesses in our tools that the wind tunnel wasn’t reliable or up to speed enough and some of our simulation wasn’t,” Horner explained.
He then admitted that the performance difference remained a feature of the team, even when Perez was delivering strong results.
“Even to today you still see it that there is an offset between what Max can get out of the car and Checo, who’s done a super job this year, but there’s still that offset.”
The distinction matters. Horner was not claiming that Red Bull deliberately built an undriveable car for Perez. Rather, his explanation suggests that the team’s pursuit of the maximum performance Verstappen could extract inevitably created characteristics that were more difficult for other drivers to exploit.
That does not mean Perez’s difficulties can be attributed exclusively to the car. Driver form, confidence, development direction and the competitive level of Verstappen all played a part in the difference between the two.
Horner says Red Bull’s young drivers faced an almost impossible challenge
The former team principal also defended Red Bull’s handling of its younger drivers, including Albon, Pierre Gasly and Liam Lawson, arguing that they were promoted to the senior team too early.
“I think Alex was too soon. I think Gasly was too soon. I think Lawson was too soon,” Horner said.
He compared their experiences with George Russell’s time at Williams, suggesting that more seasons in a less competitive environment could have allowed them to arrive at Red Bull better prepared.
Horner added that the drivers were being asked to perform in a difficult car against “a generational talent”, with the scrutiny and pressure of a leading team making the challenge even harder.
His comments provide a more nuanced explanation of Red Bull’s long-running second-seat problem. The team had access to a driver capable of extracting extraordinary performance from a particular set of car characteristics, but finding another driver who could consistently do the same proved far more difficult.
Horner’s latest remarks do not establish that every Red Bull car was designed exclusively for Verstappen. They do, however, acknowledge that the Dutchman’s preferences became an important influence on the team’s development priorities — a factor that helps explain why several team-mates struggled to close the gap.
Would you like to see more TJ13 Formula 1 coverage? Add us to your favourites list on Google to receive trusted F1 news.
The Judge, a nom de plume of an experienced F1 journalist and site founder with long-standing sources across the paddock. With over 30 years of experience in Formula 1 as an insider journalist, I have built trusted connections across the paddock, from race engineers and mechanics to senior team figures. At The Judge 13, I and a handful of trusted colleagues share exclusive Formula 1 news, expert analysis and behind-the-scenes stories you will not find in mainstream motorsport media.
Well, nothing new since he’d basically admitted to these before with his remark to Checo in late-2020.