Christian Horner admits Max Verstappen is doing something behind the scenes at Red Bull that he’s never seen before

Red Bull Racing find themselves facing a conundrum just two race weekends in the 2025 Formula 1 season.

Max Verstappen may sit second in the drivers’ championship but that doesn’t tell the full story of how this campaign is playing out.

Red Bull have built a car that appears to have an equally narrow operating window to last year’s machine.

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Verstappen has lamented how difficult it is to drive this year’s Red Bull and Liam Lawson is the man paying the price.

Lawson’s two races for Red Bull have left the team facing a decision they wouldn’t have seen coming so soon into his tenure.

Yuki Tsunoda could be swapped for Lawson as soon as the Japanese Grand Prix after a worryingly poor start to the season for the 23-year-old.

The blame can’t be placed entirely on Lawson with Red Bull needing to introspectively look at the decisions that led them to promote him, but Christian Horner is seeing work going on behind the scenes at Red Bull – primarily from Verstappen – that is giving him hope for the future.

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Christian Horner reveals what Max Verstappen is doing behind the scenes at Red Bull

In an interview with Sky Sports F1 (23/3 9:34 am) after the race in Shanghai, Horner was asked if Red Bull understood where the performance deficiencies are and whether the team are planning on fixing them this season or if they’re already going to concentrate on 2026.

He responded: “It’s race two, we can’t be that defeatist!

“I mean, we’re eight points behind in the drivers’ championship after two races and there’s everything to play for.

“If nothing else, last year teaches you, [that] you can start as strong as you like, it’s how you finish.

“Look, we’ve got great strength in depth in our team, everybody in the company knows we’ve got a bit of pace to find.

“We’ve got the tools, we’ve got the people in order to do that, it’s just unpicking it.

“I think we’ve got some very good data out of today. Max is working harder than I’ve ever seen him.

“He’s more integrated into the engineering group than I’ve ever seen and as he said, he seems to be enjoying that aspect.

“So, he’s not getting super stressed, of course, like any driver, he’s impatient for performance, but he’s working with the engineers to say, ‘Ok, what about this? This is what I’m experiencing as a driver, this is where I need the lap time from.’

“And that’s the only way collectively that we’re going to get performance.”

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Max Verstappen working closely with Red Bull factory after ignoring them last season

Red Bull haven’t suddenly discovered that their car isn’t the easiest to drive on the grid.

Sergio Perez received an apology last season when his engineer finally listened to his complaints about the RB20 after Verstappen also started to struggle compared to McLaren and Ferrari.

Red Bull continue to believe that it’s a coincidence these issues have only gotten worse after Adrian Newey’s departure but his input on why their balance issues are so pronounced this year would certainly be welcomed.

Lawson’s radio comments in China highlight just how poor the car is at driving when not in the optimum window.

Verstappen started changing his car without telling the factory last year to try and understand why he was no longer dominating races.

Horner will be pleased that he’s now working more closely with the team in Milton Keynes to identify the issues with the RB21.