Christian Horner Shares How Red Bull Racing Is Gearing Up for the Miami Grand Prix

In the moments before the inaugural Miami Grand Prix, Red Bull Racing team principal Christian Horner will likely walk up to his drivers – approaching, as he always does, from the right side of their vehicles – to offer a handshake and his blessing. It’s a pre-race ritual he performs at Formula 1 racing circuits around the globe, and a bookend to days of intense preparation by the entire Red Bull team.

Horner tells New Times that Red Bull Racing has been in the Miami area since last weekend, setting up garages, refining vehicle setups, and studying the 3.3-mile course at Hard Rock Stadium in Miami Gardens.

The Miami Grand Prix, the first in a planned ten-year run of local Formula 1 events, is scheduled to start at 3:30 p.m. on Sunday – the first Formula 1 race in Florida in more than 60 years. The race is slated for 57 laps around the stadium grounds and under a turnpike overpass, with estimated top speeds approaching 200 mph.

Though it’s a virgin venue where drivers have never before raced, Horner says Red Bull and the other Formula 1 crews have access to high-tech simulator software that has helped familiarize them with the track’s many twists and turns.

“The simulators are remarkably accurate these days. We probably don’t have the right boats in the harbor,” Horner jokes, referring to a pseudo-marina filled with yachts near the track in the simulation (the actual track is in landlocked Miami Gardens). “But everything else is very accurate. It’s great as an engineering tool but also for the drivers to get themselves up to speed.”

The former Formula 3000 driver has been Red Bull’s team leader since 2005. In 2010, at age 36, he was the youngest team principal to win a Constructors Championship in Formula 1’s modern racing era. Red Bull went on to win four consecutive Constructors Championships between 2010 and 2013 under his lead before the Mercedes-AMG Petronas team rose to dominance in the subsequent seven seasons.

Though he has decades of experience in open-wheel racing, Horner, now 48, says he has not completely eliminated the mental tension that builds before the race.

“You get slightly anxious before the start. I think it’s a healthy thing, part of the competition,” he says. “When that red light comes in, everything falls into place. Then the lights go out and the action starts.”

At the Emilia Romagna Grand Prix in Imola, Italy, Red Bull Racing’s wheelman Max Verstappen finished far ahead of the competition during the sprint race on April 23, with his teammate Sergio Perez coming in second.

This weekend, Red Bull is looking to capitalize on the recent win.

The one-two punch in Imola helped the team close in on Ferrari, which leads Formula 1 standings. Red Bull Racing is 11 points behind Ferrari in the Constructor standings, with Verstappen trailing Ferrari’s ace wheelman Charles LeClerc in the driver standings by 27 points.

Two Miami Grand Prix practice sessions are scheduled for Friday afternoon. The final practice is set for 1 p.m. Saturday before the qualifying race at 4 p.m. Teams will use the practice sessions to familiarize themselves with the course and see how their vehicles react on the new asphalt surface.

The U.K. firm Apex Circuit Design designed the anti-clockwise course, which winds around Hard Rock Stadium. Apex project director Sam Worthy told Motorsport.com that the local limerock used to build this track has some unique features. Ordinarily, he said, limerock is not well-suited for Formula 1 course construction because it can “chip” and “polish,” but the South Florida limerock sourced for the Miami Grand Prix is harder, with a high silica content that makes the material more abrasive, and therefore more desirable in terms of creating a good tire degradation pattern for the race.

Horner tells New Times the track speed should pick up as the drivers break in the limerock over the weekend.

“The key factor will be Friday in that first practice session, seeing how the surface reacts with the tires,” he explains. “And, of course, the track will just ramp up significantly through the weekend, as more rubber goes down and beds in, particularly [on] a completely new surface.”

According to Red Bull’s racing guide, Formula 1 teams will typically process a “huge amount of data” during the 24 hours before the qualifying race. In the garage, cars are stripped down, and race-ready gearboxes are installed. (Red Bull says spare gearboxes are often used in pre-race practice sessions to avoid unnecessary wear.) In the last practice session, teams will confirm their racing strategy prior to the final vehicle inspection.

During the first few laps of the race, Horner says, drivers may still be getting a feel for the track despite all the preparation. The Miami Grand Prix track, he says, appears to be “pretty unforgiving.”

According to Formula 1, more than 30 permutations of track layouts were under consideration before the current design was chosen. The circuit includes tight, winding corners and a section of low visibility where the track twists near the turnpike. Track designers expect this area of the circuit to shake up the pack before a long straightaway that leads back to the north side of Hard Rock Stadium.

“[The drivers] will be getting a feel for the curbs and where the limits are. Building up to the limit is always very important on a street track,” Horner explains. “What you don’t want to do on a street circuit or a temporary circuit is lose track time.”