Red Bull F1 team seeks answers for Austrian Grand Prix slump

Just one race on from Daniel Ricciardo's maiden F1 victory in Canada, the Australian and his team-mate Sebastian Vettel struggled for pace at the Red Bull Ring.

Although the power deficit that has left it furious with Renault partly explains what went wrong, the team thinks other factors must have come into play for it to leave the event with just a few points.

Team boss Christian Horner said: "We need to do a lot of analysis to try to understand. It's arguably been our least competitive weekend of the year.

"It's an engine-orientated circuit but so is Montreal and we were certainly more competitive in Montreal.

"We had less downforce on in Montreal, which you can't really do in Austria because of the infield section. We just found ourselves in this awkward position."

With Vettel's hopes of a points-scoring finish wrecked by a power unit problem, Ricciardo managed to finish just eighth.

And it is the fact that Red Bull's competitiveness appeared no better than it had been since the start of the season that appears to have left Horner and his team upset.

"I don't think we got the most out of the car during the weekend," he said. "We seemed to have more handling issues than we had in previous races.

"In the race, Daniel was a bit more comfortable with the balance in the high temperature.

"The problem was that having run wide at Turn 1, it was really impossible to get back into the race.

"He made a great move on the last lap at Turn 5, but eighth was about the maximum.

"This is a very power-sensitive circuit. You're on full throttle for a high percentage. The first three straights are power-orientated, stop/start straights. So it's no surprise that there are eight Mercedes cars in the top 10.

"We haven't been competitive this weekend. Eighth was the optimum that we could achieve.

"It's frustrating that we're nearly at the halfway point of the season and the situation hasn't really improved since Melbourne."