Red Bull boss Christian Horner delivered some tongue-in-cheek strategy advice to Ferrari after the Italian squad’s wet weather blunder in the Formula 1 Australian Grand Prix.
A Lap 44 rain shower prompted emergency action from race leader Lando Norris as the McLaren driver dived into the pits for Intermediate tyres, shortly after almost falling to the same fate of Oscar Piastri in the Turn 13 grass.
Max Verstappen gambled on conditions drying out, and didn’t pit for a further two laps and whatever way Red Bull looked at the situation, pitting a lap earlier wouldn’t have made much difference.
“We looked at the data, he would have been just behind,” Horner told select media including Motorsport Week regarding Verstappen’s prospects if he’d pitted on Lap 45.
Ferrari, meanwhile, gambled even longer than Red Bull and at one point Lewis Hamilton even led the race with team-mate Charles Leclerc in third.
But the rain kept falling, despite Ferrari forecasting to its drivers otherwise and when Norris came past both Scuderia drivers on his intermediates, it was clear a gamble had failed.
Ferrari double-stacked on Lap 48 and fell to ninth and 10th respectively.
“It looked like they were taking a bit of a gamble, and then they probably aborted at the worst time,” Horner said.
“So yeah, I haven’t followed their race plot that closely. From the pit wall, that’s sort of what it looked like.”
The Red Bull boss then offered some simple, but punchy advice.
I think you’ve always got to react to very much what’s going on around you,” he said.
“When it’s p***ing down in the pit lane, it’s usually a good time to put some wet tyres on.”
Ferrari admits to ‘wrong call’
Ferrari boss Frederic Vasseur admitted post-race that his team got things wrong at the Albert Park Circuit.
“It was a strange situation because Sector 1 and 2 were still dry and Sector 3 was wet,” he said.
“It was a kind of bet…we bet on the fact we have to stay on track and wait for the last part of the race with slicks.
“When Mercedes and McLaren pitted two laps before, we went at the wrong time, the best option was to pit on the same lap as Max [Verstappen] and we made the wrong call.
“But this is very difficult…we don’t have a sense of the rain, it is more of a feeling and what we can see on the screen and have on the radar from corner to corner,” he said.
“We were all surprised about the quantity of rain at this stage of the race, McLaren first, to stay on track with the slicks and just survive at the end it is easy to say it was the wrong call.”
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