Red Bull Racing keeping busy in fight against coronavirus pandemic

Despite the Formula One calendar in suspension and with no clear picture emerging as to when racing will resume in earnest, teams are joining in a common fight against the coronavirus pandemic.

It was announced on Monday that Mercedes engineers, working in conjunction with University College London, have had a respiratory device approved for use by the UK’s National Health Service.

Now, in an interview with BBC Sport, Red Bull Racing boss Christian Horner has revealed that his team are working harder than ever to produce similar breathing apparatus to help the battle against COVID-19.

“People like Rob Marshall, our chief designer, he has done a couple of all-nighters on this coming up with engineering solutions to issues they’ve encountered,” said Horner. “The key thing is getting these systems out there as quickly as possible.

“F1’s ability to problem-solve is second to none and our ability to make rapid prototype parts is again second to none. So not just our team but all the teams have responded in a phenomenal way. I can only judge what’s going on in our facility, and the efforts that the engineering team and R&D and manufacturing have put into this have been exemplary.”

Red Bull Racing and Mercedes are not the only British-based teams helping out in the fight against coronavirus, with other British-based F1 teams including McLaren, Racing Point, Williams, Renault and HAAS joining the ‘Project Pitlane’ initiative to help design and manufacture similar devices.

“Basically, we’ve been using the engineering skill of the relevant people to problem solve and knock out a few rapid prototypes and get it to the point of sign-off,” added Horner.