LONDON, April 14 : Racing Bulls will bring upgrades to the Miami and Canadian Grands Prix in quick succession next month after the cancellation of Formula One races in the Middle East disrupted the schedule.
The Red Bull-owned team’s boss Alan Permane told reporters in a video call on Tuesday that the situation was a result of Miami becoming the fourth round of the season rather than the sixth.
Racing Bulls had planned to bring their first major upgrade to Bahrain, which would have been round four, with the second destined for Montreal which would have been the seventh but is now the fifth.
“We had a pretty decent upgrade planned for Bahrain which of course we will see in Miami,” said Permane, adding that there would now be more sets of parts available.
“We had another upgrade planned for Montreal, so we will have a sort of quick double hit there.
“There was no way to bring them both (to Miami). The Montreal one we can’t bring earlier, so it’s a slightly strange situation where we’ll bring a new, quite decent upgrade, a new component, and then almost replace it straight away. That’s just the way the calendar has fallen.”
Racing Bulls are seventh in the 11-team standings after three races with British rookie Arvid Lindblad and New Zealander Liam Lawson.
They are only two points behind sister team Red Bull and Renault-owned Alpine and four adrift of Haas with the four teams far behind the top three and also well clear of the bottom four.
Permane said the team had done a good job so far and expected the upgrades to allow Racing Bulls, who have scored in every race, to stay within the midfield quartet.
He said the lack of races in April meant the team could do some unplanned work on the chassis and upgrades that had not been scheduled so early.
While the race team had been encouraged to take some time off, other parts of the company were working harder than planned.Â
“What I know we’ve got in the pipeline will lift us certainly a little bit more into that midfield battle, whereas at the moment we’re more to the middle-to-the-back of it,” said Permane.
“We seem to be able to do a very good job in qualifying and then we haven’t been so competitive in the races.”
