Christian Horner has explained why Red Bull decided to leave Max Verstappen on track when the rain increased in intensity at Interlagos. According to him, switching to new intermediate tires was not advantageous, and the probability of neutralization or even interruption was high.
“We could see the weather conditions were getting terrible” Horner said. “His tires were in good shape, and a new set of intermediates was negligible compared to what he had.”
“So we made the decision to go for a long run. Then, of course, our bad luck in qualifying turned into fortune in the race, when the race was red flagged and found itself neutralized.”
“Afterwards, I mean the race started, I think, too early. He took his time, Ocon got ahead, he was starting to chip away at it. And then another safety car. And then his recovery, or his braking maneuver in turn 1 on Ocon, was remarkable.”
It was after having tested new intermediates in Pérez that the team made its decision: “Again, like Saturday, he was in a line of cars. At that time, there was Yuki in the front with Esteban and Charles [Leclerc]. He was in all that dirty air, but we weren't wearing out the tires.”
“The tires were in good condition. We could see when Checo stopped that the tires were in very good condition. That's why we decided not to pit for a new set of inters and to run longer, because we knew heavy rain was coming.”
“We could see the rain pouring down behind us on the pit wall. It was a matter of survival at that point. It's surprising that a safety car wasn't thrown or a flag red has not been implemented sooner.”
Having a new engine may have helped Verstappen, but Horner refutes the idea that it was decisive: “Of course it’s all a package, but I don’t think there was a significant advantage in terms of power or anything else in the wet conditions.”
“All of Max's overtaking was done on the brakes, not in a straight line. We chose to take this engine here because it's a circuit where you can overtake and we regretted it at race time. lunch. Now we're glad we made that choice.”
Horner thinks Red Bull could have had a good weekend in the dry: “The team has worked very hard to try to understand these tires. It varies. Seven days ago it was a different scenario and Ferrari had incredibly good degradation. I think we took a step forward in Austin .”
“Winning the Sprint race, we didn't feel like we capitalized enough on this weekend. The improvements that we made, we really started to make the most of it here, as was the case last weekend.”
