Horner guesses at reason for faulty DRS Verstappen: 'Maybe too ambitious'

Max Verstappen won the Spanish Grand Prix despite a broken DRS system on his RB18. It seems that the problem was not only in the activation system of the opening rear wing. Team boss Christian Horner is guessing at the actual reason.

Verstappen had the greatest difficulty in passing Mercedes' George Russell. During the race in Spain, the Red Bull driver had a working DRS one moment and not the next. It was expected that something was wrong with the activation system of the DRS, but Motorsport-total.com reports that there may have been more to the problem with the rear wing.

Wrong move by Red Bull in battle of the kilos?

The medium shows with a photo by F1 technical expert Giorgio Piola that Red Bull was dealing with small cracks and holes that could be seen on the wing after qualifying. Before the race, the team repaired the upper wing. It is likely that the damages returned during the race and that the problem has to do with the strength of the material.

For teammate Sergio Perez, there was nothing wrong with the DRS, so it remains unclear what exactly caused Verstappen's wing not to open on command. Still, Horner thinks it may have to do with the fact that some parts of the RB18 are now too light. The team has been working on saving weight since the beginning of the season, as the car is well above the maximum allowed weight. Horner thinks the team has been a little too ambitious. With that, the team boss seems to insinuate that (the material of) the lighter wing is not resilient enough.