Red Bull “will fight after the F1 break” – Horner

Red Bull’s Max Verstappen had achieved a 32-point lead over Mercedes driver Lewis Hamilton in the drivers’ standings by clearing the France-Austria triple header, but after two eventful weekends he went eight points behind August break.

At Silverstone, Verstappen made a 51G smash at Copse after being tagged by Hamilton, while in Hungary it fell victim to Valtteri Bottas, who overbrake himself on take-off, hurling Lando Norris’ McLaren into the Dutchman’s sidepod.

Although he missed a considerable amount of downforce, Verstappen managed to score two points but had a series of “freak moments” behind him that cost him the championship lead. In the constructors’ championship too, Mercedes overtook its rival and took the lead with a 12-point lead.

Verstappen’s team boss Horner has promised that Red Bull will come out of the gates when the race resumes at Spa-Francorchamps at the end of August and is confident that his team’s losing streak is over.

“We won six races in the first half of the year,” said Horner. “The races that we didn’t score, if you look at Azerbaijan, it wasn’t Max’s fault, Silverstone wasn’t Max’s fault, this wasn’t Max’s fault.

“So our luck will change. Over the course of a season it will even out and I’m looking forward to the second half of the year.

“I think the whole team deserves a well-deserved break and the drivers will get a good break and believe me, we will fight in the second half of this championship so it will be interesting.”

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Red Bull left Hungary particularly frustrated with all the accidental damage it had sustained in addition to the engine problems for Verstappen and his teammate Sergio Perez, who was knocked out on the spot amid the carnage at Turn 1.

Before the race, Verstappen had to switch to his third and final Honda engine due to a problem believed to be due to his accident at Silverstone – reuse is unlikely.

If the engine change is confirmed by Perez, both drivers will face a slump in the grid if they inevitably switch to a fourth engine in the second half of the season.

“It certainly won’t help,” admitted Horner. “We have a lot of accidental damage and possibly two engines that we lost to other drivers’ actions, so yeah, very frustrating.

“But you know what, we are in the point difference between a first and second place.

“We’re going into the summer break, we’ve had bad luck in the last couple of races, it was pretty brutal in terms of damage, parts and engines, but we’re going to put ourselves down and fight for the second half.” this championship.

“Of course it’s been a tough couple of weeks, but things can change very quickly as you just saw and there is still a long way to go in this championship.”