Red Bull’s season hasn’t gotten off to the best of starts with a total of 14 laps having been completed over three days of running (compare that to 177 for Mercedes), which has left the team in desperate need of a solution to their problem, whatever that may be.
The team’s engineering co-ordinator, Andy Damerum, says they’ll dig deeper overnight to find a fix to what is believed to be a severe cooling issue, in the hope of completing further running on Friday.
“We worked hard yesterday to make the changes it was felt were necessary to overcome the problems we identified and we were hopeful of a more successful day today,” he said.
“Unfortunately, the measures we took only partially solved the issue and, as with yesterday, it’s more sensible to stop and dig deeper into finding a solution.
“It’s obviously not where we want to be and naturally the whole team is frustrated by these issues. However, we’re pretty good at bouncing back from this type of thing. This is where the whole team pulls together and I’m sure we will get these problems fixed.”
The problem is so severe, team principal Christian Horner and chief technical director Adrian Newey have abandoned the test, leaving the circuit on Thursday afternoon for an emergency meeting back at Red Bull’s Milton Keynes factory.
