Red Bull "thin on spare parts" after Albon's Mexico F1 FP2 crash
Red Bull Racing Formula 1 boss Christian Horner admits that the team is short of spare parts after a heavy accident for Alex Albon on FP2 in Mexico yesterday
Although the impact looked relatively benign, the team had to build up the spare chassis for the Thai driver overnight, which means it doesn't have a safety net this weekend should either of its drivers have a major incident today.
Horner says the turnover of different aero specs means that the team usually doesn't have many parts in stock.
"We are a bit thin on spare parts after Alex's little incident yesterday," Horner told Sky F1. "It's just normal, you don't stockpile parts because they get replaced and updated relatively often.
"The guys did a phenomenal job last night to change the chassis within the curfew, but obviously you don't want to have another one of those before qualifying or the race."
Albon has had several incidents in recent weeks, having also had off-track excursions in Singapore and Russia.
He finished today's FP3 session in eighth place, 0.191s down on team mate Max Verstappen.
"I think he's given himself a bit of a hard time last night," added Horner. "He was poring over data until late in the evening, but it's a new day and a new opportunity."
Horner also reiterated his thoughts on the impressive performance of Ferrari on the straights.
"The Ferrari is just so fast on the straight, it was 0.8, 0.9s quicker in a straight line yesterday with Sebastian [Vettel] - the question is how much have they got left in the tank?
"We're quicker in all the corners, but it's the straight line that's doing all the damage. It's going to be fascinating to see what they've got for this afternoon.
"When you look at all the others, the Honda engine is now getting pretty close to the Mercedes, the Renault is pretty much there as well.
"The standout at the moment, the benchmark, is the Ferrari. It's not just a little bit, it's whoppingly large, the difference. That's what we've got to try and make up in the corners."
Horner says that Ferrari is still able to run a lot of downforce: "We have the ability to do these acoustic and GPS overlays, and of course you've then got to eyeball the amount of downforce, the amount of wing, that the various cars are running.
"You can see the Ferrari certainly isn't shy of rear wing or front wing or downforce or what we call the T-wings around the back of the car. They've got plenty of downforce on that car, but it's just ballistically quick in a straight line."
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