Christian Horner admits 'FUNDAMENTAL' error to blame for Red Bull's Monza nightmare

Christian Horner has admitted the team has a “fundamental” problem as Red Bull struggle to find answers to performance issues.

The Milton Keynes-based team have made a great start to the season and have looked good on their way to a third successive constructors’ championship.

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Since to Lando Norris victory in Miami, however, Red Bull was largely on the back foot.

The rivals have closed the gap each week and now the team’s problems have culminated in a disastrous qualifying performance ahead of the Italian Grand Prix.

Max Verstappen and Red Bull were on the pace in Italy

Red Bull were clearly the fourth best team in qualifying at Monza

Why is Red Bull suddenly so slow?

Although Max Verstappen managed to maintain a relatively healthy lead in the championship, McLaren they narrowed the gap to just 30 points in the team standings.

That the Dutch champion could only qualify in seventh place, behind both McLarens, Mercedesand Ferrari sitessignals the alarming derailment of Red Bull’s development path.

As the fourth best team at Monza and with both championships under threat, Red Bull are urgently in need of fixing their problems.

“The balance just isn’t there, you can hear from Max’s comments,” team principal Horner told Sky Sports after qualifying.

Throughout practice and the session, Verstappen complained that the car would not turn in low- and medium-speed corners and that grip fluctuated between sets of tires of the same compound.

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Christian Horner says Red Bull need to address their issues quickly

“There’s fundamentally something going on that we’re not on top of. Q2 didn’t look too bad, but in Q3 we were miles away.”

Verstappen’s 7th place time was almost seven tenths off Norris’ pole position lap and half a second slower than Lewis Hamilton in P6. Sergio PerezMeanwhile, he abandoned his final flying lap and was 8th fastest.

“We’re looking at everything,” Horner continued. “We ran older specs last week to see if they fixed the issues, but the reality was we still had the same characteristics and handling issues.

“We have to sort it out quickly because McLaren have made a significant step up in the last few races and we are now behind Ferrari and Mercedes.

“Something is clearly not working with the car. There will be an engineering solution to an engineering problem.”

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