Christian Horner declares Red Bull ‘miles off’ after lacklustre Monza quali

Christian Horner said Red Bull were “miles off” after both drivers failed to crack the top six in qualifying for the Italian grand Prix.

Red Bull’s once seemingly invincible championship lead is looking increasingly vulnerable and their performance in Monza will not have done much to boost their spirits.

Christian Horner says answers must be found “quickly” to Red Bull’s problems

Despite looking quick in Q2, both Red Bulls dropped significantly down the order for the final qualifying session with Max Verstappen 0.695 seconds off pole sitter and title rival Lando Norris.

In his assessment of the session to Sky Sports, Horner admitted the team were “miles off” where they needed to be.

“It didn’t look too bad, there’s still the handling characteristics that Max has been talking about,” he said. “But then Q3 there’s something I missed that the others can all improve on new tyres, but we were miles away. We need to understand that and understand it quickly.”

Horner’s particular frustation appeared not to be with the lack of speed but rather the confusion surrounding their car, a problem that plagued Mercedes for much of the last two seasons.

“I think we simply don’t understand that we did a 19.6 on scrubbed [tyres] and then couldn’t, on two sets of new tyres, better a 20.0 and the balance just isn’t there for him [Verstappen]. You can hear from his comments.

“So it’s something that fundamentally is happening that we’re not on top of at the moment. So we need to obviously understand it and understand why on the old set are we able to do that time and two sets of new tyres we couldn’t get anywhere near it?”

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Verstappen has failed to win a race since Barcelona, marking his longest drought for a number of years, and Horner admitted they have tried a number of solutions to discover what is causing the car’s issues.

“We’re looking at everything,” he said. “We ran an older spec last weekend to see if that redressed any of the issues at all and the reality was we still have the same handling characteristics and issues.

“So that’s given an awful lot of data for the guys but a lot to get our head around. We need to address it quickly. We can see the McLarens have made a significant step over the last few races and we’re now behind Ferrari and Mercedes here as well. So a lot to do.

“Race points are tomorrow, but obviously starting seventh and eighth, that’s going to be tough.”

Read next: Italian GP: Lando Norris grabs pole position with Max Verstappen only P7 in qualifying