F1: Low downforce caused Red Bull tire woe

The need to run low downforce in Baku caused the tire problems that wrecked the Red Bull Formula 1 team's European Grand Prix, reckons Christian Horner.

Daniel Ricciardo started from the front row, but had to pit to swap his super-softs for softs on lap six of 51 and then return for mediums on lap 22.

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That consigned him to a seventh-place finish, with teammate Max Verstappen encountering the same issues in eighth.

Horner admitted Ricciardo "ran into tire deg issues very quickly", suggesting the high temperatures were a factor but that the need to boost straight-line speed had forced a costly compromise.

"Perhaps running low downforce made the car move around a lot and grained the tires, which the car is very sensitive to," he told Autosport. "As soon as we put the medium tire on, the slip seemed to get better and the car reacted much better to it. Max set fast laps continually and set the third fast lap of the race, so there's some lessons there.

"You end up chasing straight-line speed, so we end up taking downforce off the car and taking bits off, so we're effectively running Monza levels of downforce. Perhaps we've introduced another issue with the car moving around in too much in high temperature."

Ricciardo said he had been surprised to run into tire troubles given Red Bull's usual strength in that regard.

"By lap three I was spinning the wheels a lot and there was no way out," he said. "So we put the softs on and the intention was to go to the end on those, but the balance was more or less the same so we were definitely forced to go with the mediums. The tires were just getting too hot and we couldn't generate any grip.

"But we didn't expect it because we're usually really good with our tires, especially when it's hot – Singapore is always one of our strongest circuits.

"So everyone's a bit surprised."

Asked if he felt the Baku problems would be a one-off, Horner replied: "It's out of kilter, but I think there's some lessons to be learned and some analysis to be done."

Originally on Autosport.com