What made Verstappen unable to keep up with Norris? Horner explains

Max Verstappen, with his Red Bull, is the fastest of the field at the moment. In Miami, this speed was not seen towards the end of the race, when the Dutchman could not keep up with Lando Norris. Red Bull Racing team boss Christian Horner explained after the Grand Prix what caused this.

Max Verstappen has won almost every race in the past three years. In Miami, it was therefore expected that he could turn this into another win after his pole position. Verstappen was leading for a while, but at one point the Red Bull's speed decreased.

Verstappen had considerable damage to his Red Bull

According to Red Bull Racing team boss Christian Horner, this was due to the cone the three-time world champion had hit. 'This ruined his race pace. ''I think we had a great balance all weekend and then obviously he hit the bollard around lap 20 and that's actually done quite a lot of damage to the underside of the car, so we'll have to look at exactly what the effect of that was"

''It's a reasonable amount of damage,'' Horner continued. "The area around the left rear floor there's a reasonable amount of damage that's missing and you can see it flexing as well.'' Yet, Horner also recognises that McLaren did take a step forward with their updates. ''They had good pace in the second half of the race, they were quick on the medium in the sprint race quali but we still managed two poles here this weekend, the sprint victory and we were leading the race had it not been for the safety car but you can see they've definitely made a step forward so it'll be then interesting to see what happens over the next few races once we head back to Europe."