For the second race in succession, Red Bull promised much but couldn’t quite hang with their rivals in Baku.
Despite starting second on the grid, after the mayhem at the end of qualifying, Daniel Ricciardo was unable to translate it into a strong result on Sunday.
Indeed, the Australian was left fighting back towards the end of the race passing Nico Hulkenberg in the closing laps to finish seventh.
His teammate Max Verstappen was also left unable to make progress, only moving up one place from the starting position of ninth with his own move on Hulkenberg two laps after Ricciardo.
The long main straight at Formula One’s newest circuit meant the European Grand Prix was never going to be the strongest for the Milton Keynes-based outfit, but it wasn’t so much a lack of top speed that hindered them.
Of course, it didn’t help as Ricciardo found himself overtaken by both Ferrari’s, Sergio Perez and Lewis Hamilton at different stages of the race but, more worryingly for the team, the issue was the tyres.
Much like Montreal it was maintaining the Pirelli’s into the correct operating window that proved difficult. The team made an early switch to a two-stop strategy before having to resort to the medium compound for the second half of the race.
After the race Ricciardo admitted tyre wear was a much bigger issue than expected:
“By lap three I was spinning the wheels a lot and there was no way out,” he was quoted by Autosport.
“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 tyres 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 tyres, especially when it’s hot – Singapore is always one of our strongest circuits.
“So everyone’s a bit surprised.”
Team boss Christian Horner suggested it was the setup the team had needed to adopt for the weekend, that had caused the increased degradation.
“Perhaps running low downforce made the car move around a lot and grained the tyres, which the car is very sensitive to,” he also told Autosport.
“As soon as we put the medium tyre 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.”
Certainly on higher downforce circuits, tyres have rarely been such an issue for Red Bull. At earlier races in China, Spain and Monaco it looked as if the RB12 was once again one of the leading cars in terms of how it works the Pirelli rubber.
But for Ricciardo, in particular, to run into the same issue in two consecutive races, albeit at lower downforce venues, may derail the progress the team was making.
It is conceivable that the method of which heat is generated through the tyre was a bigger issue for Red Bull than others.
Circuits like those in Canada and Baku, with their multiple long straight increases the pressures inside the tyre, therefore reducing the contact patch and leading to the type of graining everyone had to deal with.
Compare that to the higher G-forces and loads put across the width of a tyre in medium and high-speed corners at more downforce dependent tracks and that is where Red Bull potentially are stronger.
The next four venues go back to the higher downforce requirements that Red Bull prefer and certainly they will hope for a stronger result at their home race in Austria in two weeks time.
Based on Baku, the TAG Heuer-branded Renault power unit is at least enough to make it competitive with Mercedes and Ferrari, it’s translating that pace across a full race distance that now has to be the team’s main goal going forward.
