Red Bull and Verstappen were one second short: "Would have made pit stop by then"

During an online press moment of Red Bull, Christian Horner discussed the fact that Max Verstappen did not come in for a second pit stop, as they had expected at Mercedes. According to the team boss of the Austrian race team, Verstappen was one second short in his RB16 to go for the undercut at Valtteri Bottas.

"We had some more downforce on the car today because of the threat of some rain", says Horner about the setting of the RB16. "The Renault ran lower downforce and I don't think they worked the tyres as hard in the middle sector and that gave them a better stint length." Ocon was able to overtake Alexander Albon on the straight in the final lap.

Verstappen was one second short

Why didn't Red Bull go on the attack and try to put pressure on Mercedes with a two-stropper. "Max was able to pull out 17 seconds, if we made it to 18 we would've made another pitstop because we wouldn't have been behind him and we were thinking that might be a way of putting Mercedes under some dilemma ahead", he explains.

Horner looks back on the Belgian Grand Prix with a reasonably satisfied feeling. "I think generally we've been closer to Mercedes here this weekend. The circuit is one that favours them so we have made a bit of progress here", Horner said. "It's obviously just frustrating when it's the same two cars we're competing with and the same one winning every weekend but we're working hard to try and change that at some point"

Dirty air for Red Bull

Verstappen tried to take advantage of the slipstream, but in the second sector, that advantage was always nullified. "We had the dirty air in the middle sector so we couldn't quite run at their pace. Being in the dirty air here has quite an effect so we were able to stay with them through the first stint. The second stint we were going with them ok. We tried to keep them under pressure so if we did go for a two-stop they wouldn't have been able to respond so Max was able to stay within a couple of seconds of Valtteri, but we just didn't quite have that pace today", concludes the British chef.