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Horner dubs Red Bull chassis strongest of the grid

Horner dubs Red Bull chassis strongest of the grid

22-12-2018 11:23
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Nicolás Quarles van Ufford

Red Bull team principal Christian Horner has insisted that his team's chassis was the best one on the grid in 2018, as he explained the Bulls always reigned supreme on the circuits where pure power was less of a factor.

Red Bull managed to win four out of the 21 races, with both Max Verstappen and Daniel Ricciardo grabbing two each. Verstappen added to this by ending on the podium a massive 11 times in total this season, where Ricciardo only stood on the top step if he got on the podium in 2018.

Typically downforce-heavy circuits like Monaco and Mexico were both won by Red Bull, which proves the point to Christian Horner that the chassis on the RB14 was stronger than all competitors around it.

"I think [the] RB14 was a very strong car," the Brit told Autosport.

"Arguably it's the strongest chassis of the season.

"If you were to equalise the power between the top three teams I think you'd see that [the] RB14 has been an extremely good race car.

"Look at whenever the power unit [wasn't] a factor, or as predominant a factor.

"We won in Monaco even with an MGU-K failure, we were second in Singapore, we won in Mexico again when altitude played a key role. Those races we [were] particularly strong in.

"Obviously we tended to run lower downforce levels to try and create the same top speeds, and as soon as you try to trim wing to do that you introduce other compromises into the handling of the car.

"But when we [were] able to run full spec, we should have had a front-row lock-out in Monaco, and we had one in Mexico."

The 'should' in Monaco is a reference to Verstappen parking his RB14 in the wall in FP3, resulting in him not being able to qualify a few hours after because of the damage that had been done to the car. Ricciardo did manage to put his Red Bull on pole and eventually, as Horner said, won the race despite having a damaged car.