Red Bull may have found the source of its RB20 problems

Red Bull is pretty open that it needs to quickly turn around the performance of its RB20 if it is not going to lose both Formula 1 championships this year.

But saying what it wants is one thing, doing it is another – especially because it does not yet have a clear explanation on what has gone wrong.

We can forget wild conspiracy theories about the FIA asking for devices to be removed from its car. Instead, Red Bull’s problems are all of its own making.

While not definitive yet about what has happened, there was a fascinating hint from team boss Christian Horner after the Italian GP about a potential trigger for its woes.

Speaking about the balance problems that are hurting the car, Horner said: “It’s disconnected front and rear. We can see that.

“Our wind tunnel doesn’t say that, but the track says that. So it’s getting on top of that, because obviously when you have that, it means you can’t trust your tools. Then you have to go back to track data and previous experience.”

In a bid to find out, let’s try and unravel where it all went wrong for the team and take a look at how it has been attempting to sort things out.

In terms of results and car behaviour, it seems that the Miami Grand Prix was the turning point. This was not only the case for Red Bull, but also those chasing it, as Miami Grand unveiled its first big update of the season, which catapulted it to victory and gave it a much more usable platform at each event.

Meanwhile, Mercedes joined the fray following its own larger update package that arrived in Monaco.

Ferrari was in and around the front of the pack until around this time too, before its troubles in Canada and then the difficulties caused by the return of high-speed bouncing from its Spanish GP floor. This was another example of a team finding out its simulation tools were saying one thing and the real car saying another.

Red Bull has obviously become aware of the possibility of a wind tunnel correlation issue and, over the course of the last few races, has been testing out numerous parts from its update archive in order to find a benign solution that did not sacrifice too much performance.