Now, here is a wild reality check for anyone watching the front of the grid: Red Bull has admitted that its frustrating race start problems will not be fully resolved until next season, as Motorsport.com reports. That is right, a proper fix for their launch woes is quite a long way off.
The trouble boiled over at the United States Grand Prix in Austin, where Red Bull driver Isack Hadjar called for the clutch to be redesigned after a difficult start. The Red Bull driver dropped from third to fifth as the lights turned off, blaming the mishap on "clutch over delivery". To pile on the misery, both he and team-mate Max Verstappen suffered from radio issues during the race, prompting Max Verstappen to joke that the team should "start communicating in sign language".
When asked whether Isack Hadjar was right in saying the team is good at fixing complex issues but struggles with "silly things", team principal Laurent Mekies did not shy away from the truth. He conceded that struggling with radio issues for the second race in a row is deeply frustrating and makes everyone's lives very difficult. But while the radio woes are something they want to fix quickly, the starts are a completely different beast.
According to the team principal, launch performance involves almost every department across the company, excluding aerodynamics. It touches the engine, the gearbox, the clutch, and many other components. He noted that they have clearly not been the benchmark in launch performance since the beginning of the season. In fact, he pointed out that because the car has improved massively in the meantime and is now fighting closer to the front, that deficit feels even more painful now against very strong competition.
Fans hoping for a complete solution anytime soon will have to exercise some patience. While the team will continue reducing the gap to the competition from now until the end of the year by learning at every race, a full fix requires significant design and hardware changes that will only arrive next year.
As for those baffling radio failures, the Frenchman admitted they still do not fully understand where the issue stems from. If they understood it, it would already be solved. Instead, they are forced to watch as the competition does a better job, especially since they can hear everyone else's radio and realize they have been struggling more than they would like.
