Red Bull boss Christian Horner has revealed that Safety Car concerns triggered the decision to ignore Max Verstappen’s plea to pit in Formula 1’s Austrian Grand Prix.
Verstappen looked in cruise control at the Red Bull Ring as he retained a nine-second advantage over McLaren’s Lando Norris in second place during the second stint.
However, the Dutchman proceeded to complain that he was losing grip as he ended up caught in between backmarkers and Norris began to eat into his rival’s margin.
But despite an animated Verstappen’s demand to pit earlier to preserve his advantage, he was told that his stint was being prolonged to drop him into an optimal gap.
The ever-dependable Red Bull crew fumbled the stop, though, as a 6.5s time put Norris on Verstappen’s tail and contributed to the subsequent Turn 3 clash on Lap 64.
Horner believes that Verstappen would have had enough in hand to protect against Norris on fresher rubber in the final stint without the wheel gun error that occurred.
“The first part of the race was going very well,” Horner reviewed. “We pulled out a six-second gap in the first stint on the Medium tyre, everything was under control.
“On the Hard tyre, the temperatures with the cloud cover were a bit lower. But we still got up to an eight-second lead at one point.
“By the time we’d gone through the traffic, it was about six-and-a-half. We then pitted on the same lap as McLaren, and there was a sticking left-rear nut.
“And the gunman just had to go on it twice, so I think we lost, I think it was four seconds.
“And that then put Lando on a fresh set of Mediums versus a scrubbed set for Max, he got that new tyre advantage that had they gone out six seconds apart, he’d have probably closed the gap, but I think we’d probably have had enough to manage it in those final laps. With the delta being about two-tenths of a second.”
Verstappen, who dismissed Norris’ claim that he was moving under braking in their fight, expressed post-race that Red Bull’s overall execution had been “disastrous”.
Horner has revealed that Red Bull’s initial strategic plan was to run the Hard compound twice, but the team extended Verstappen’s stop to guard against a Safety Car.
Having lost out to a long-running Norris in Miami when an intervention arrived, Horner has considered that the champion’s sole mistake was not remaining on Hards.
“You’ve spoken to him when he’s just had a tough race,” Horner contended. “The strategy for us, we were going into the race looking at Medium-Hard-Hard.
“And if you look at what I think he’s talking about is the point at which we were stopped at the second point, the second stop, because we extended to cover Norris but whilst we were quicker than Norris, it made sense to do that, because you get unlucky with a Safety Car, you lose track position.
“Therefore, while we had the pace on Lando, we were able to be maintaining and pulling a gap, sometimes tactically it makes sense to do that.
“Probably we would have been better off with new Medium versus a new Hard, but hindsight’s a wonderful thing.
“But I mean look, the pace of the car has been very strong this weekend. We’ve had two poles, he’s led all but nine laps of the race, the sprint race yesterday, he’s extended his lead in the championship. We’ve extended our lead I think in the constructors’ championship. So despite not getting the win, it’s not been totally disastrous.”
Verstappen’s sudden pace drop towards the end drew comparisons to the race at Imola earlier this term, but Horner denied that he’s worried about the recurring trend.
“I think that was tyre offset, because first stint, second stint, we were absolutely fine, particularly at the end of the stint,” he explained.
“So that then puts Lando in the slipstream. He went off, he got a black and white flag.
“He then went up the inside of Max and went off. So it was a fourth strike that went to the stewards.
“And the likelihood was he was going to get a penalty. And I think he knew that.
“Then the incident at Turn 3, to me when I looked at the replay, it looks like six of one or half a dozen of the other, both racing hard.”
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