Red Bull F1 expresses frustration towards Verstappen: “That was absolutely no advantage”

Christian Horner, team boss of Red Bull Racing, had to admit after the F1 Grand Prix of Miami that there was frustration over the fact that Max Verstappen ruined his own race by damaging the floor of the RB20 after a mistake by the three-time world champion. Horner admits that Red Bull escaped ‘with a black eye’ this weekend.

Opposite Speed ​​week Horner begins with congratulations to Lando Norris, who won the race ahead of Verstappen and Charles Leclerc and thus achieved his first victory in F1. “He completed a flawless race and fully deserved his first Grand Prix victory. Hats off to Lando and McLaren.” If Horner focuses on his own team, he must also acknowledge that it could have been over for Red Bull in the first corner of the race. “It’s not that everything went badly for us. In fact, we increased our lead in both championships. In addition, Sergio Pérez was very aggressive at the start, and it made no difference [in de eerste bocht]. We couldn’t have had any of our cars in the race after a few seconds. That was a dangerous moment and it was very close. In that respect, we escaped here with a black eye.”

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Horner critical after damage to Verstappen’s floor

During the first phase of the race, Verstappen was unable to pull away from the rest of the field by more than three seconds. Horner then saw that Verstappen made a mistake, drove over a post and damaged his floor. “Unfortunately Max hit one of those posts at the chicane, and part of that post damaged the floor of the car. I can’t go into detail about how much time that took, but it was absolutely no advantage.” Opposite Motorsport.com Horner goes into further detail about the damage. “It was a significant piece on the left rear side of the floor. Part of it was missing and the floor was flexing quite a bit. It certainly didn’t help.”

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Horner saw Red Bull have bad luck with the safety car timing

Then, as Horner saw, Red Bull also had bad luck with the timing of the safety car. Verstappen had just gone inside, where Norris was still outside. “We were a bit unlucky with the timing of the Safety Car period. However, that is part of motorsport, and you have to take it on the chin. Max complained about the car sliding, but we think the sliding of the car was too had to do with the damage to the floor of the car. I also don’t want to undermine the performance of Lando and McLaren in any way. They showed great speed and did everything well in their favor and gave Lando tires that were six or seven laps newer than Max’s, but that’s part of the sport.”

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