Will Red Bull’s new ‘magic floor’ be enough to catch up to McLaren?

Red Bull’s “magic floor” will not close the gap on track to McLaren, Guenther Steiner adamant the only way Red Bull can beat McLaren now is if the Woking team makes mistakes.

Red Bull are expected to throw the dice one last time in F1 2024 when they introduce a big upgrade package for the RB20 at the United States Grand Prix.

Guenther Steiner asks the ‘big question’ of Red Bull

Pulling out all the stops in one last attempt to secure both championship titles, Red Bull will bring a significant upgrade package to Austin which the team hopes will improve the RB20’s mechanical and aerodynamic performance.

“I think for all teams, Austin will be a natural time of the year to bring some news. We have something important, but I think Ferrari, Mercedes, and McLaren will also have updates,” said Red Bull team boss Christian Horner.

“The whole team worked hard to understand the problems and solve them and, if everything goes well, to remedy the situation already from Austin.”

The new package is expected to include a revised floor, Red Bull having learnt from their wayward Hungarian Grand Prix floor that unsettled the balance of the RB20.

Red Bull will introduce the new package four weeks after the last race, the Singapore Grand Prix, which saw Lando Norris claim a dominant 21-second victory over Max Verstappen.

The autumn break though, won’t have helped Red Bull find a miracle way to overcome that deficit.

“I don’t think there is because everything is planned beforehand,” Steiner told the Red Flags podcast. “I don’t think you have any advantage of that, because what is coming for Austin that is already developed.

“I mean, obviously you can prepare yourself better, but they are anyway prepared very good. If you have a weaker team, I don’t think the preparation level will be any different.

“So I think that the big question is how big is this upgrade? This apparent magic floor which is coming to Austin, is it going to help them to catch up again to McLaren?

“I think that’s the big question. All the rest is pretty straightforward.”

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Guenther Steiner tips Ferrari to ‘play bigger role’ in title fight

Going on to answer his own question, the former Haas F1 team boss believes Red Bull will not catch McLaren again this season.

In fact, he reckons Red Bull are even behind Ferrari in terms of pace, it was just the Scuderia’s poor qualifying in Singapore where neither Charles Leclerc nor Carlos Sainz set a time, that gave Verstappen a free pass.

“I don’t think catching McLaren this year will be possible,” he said. “What they [McLaren] showed in Singapore, for me was just amazing. It was amazing, you know.

“So I think that Ferrari can play a bigger role than they played in Singapore for the World Championship because in theory, they should be in front of Max but they didn’t qualify both of them.

“So there was no red flag Safety Car, nothing in Singapore which could have helped them to move forward so they had to fight their way through it, which wasn’t easy.

“And as you saw also with Oscar Piastri, as soon as you’re in dirty air it is just difficult in places like Singapore, more than any other place.

“So it is like, I think McLaren is a good way but Max will be fighting to the end to hang on to the championship.”

Asked if he believed that if Red Bull ‘nailed’ the Austin floor they would only get close to Ferrari, Steiner replied: “Yeah, and they can take advantage if the McLaren make a mistake, have something going wrong.

“I think they more have to rely on McLaren messing it up than them getting it right.”

Verstappen heads to Austin 52 points up on Norris in the Drivers’ Championship while Red Bull trail McLaren by 41 points in the teams’ standings.

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