Horner: "It's important to understand where the Mercedes speed came from"

Red Bull Racing team boss Christian Horner is concerned about Mercedes straight-line speed. Max Verstappen led the majority of the race but couldn't do anything about the pace from Lewis Hamilton in the final 15 laps of the Brazilian Grand Prix. He labelled the Mercedes car as "unraceable" but confirmed his team won't be protesting in Brazil. 

Busy weekend for the FIA

On the long straight between turn 12 and turn one, Hamilton always gained on his Dutch rival throughout their long duel on the circuit. The Mercedes rear wing was bought into question on Friday after Verstappen touched Hamilton's car in parc ferme after the qualfiying session. The W12 was then disqualified from qualifiyng and had to start from the back. The seven-time World Champion still made it through the field to win. Christian Horner reviews the race with Sky Sports. 

"Congratulations to Mercedes and Lewis they were very quick. It was unraceable today. We put up as big of a defence as we could. Max did his best and raced hard, just no change today. Straight-line speed is really impressive. That new engine. They've got a Monaco rear wing on here so it's very impressive. Max can't defend against that, any other driver had to get within 0.4 seconds to get near to an overtake. If Mercedes were within 0.9 seconds they could be in the braking area at the end of the straight. That's a potent weapon with fast tracks coming up," Horner said. 

"We won't be protesting at this race. It's important to understand where the speed came from. They've got a new engine and Monaco levels of downforce. When he passed Max he was 30kph quicker on that lap. It's something we need to understand and it's down to the FIA to police the sport. We trust their tests."

Turn four incident

On lap 48, it looked like Hamilton and Verstappen were going to crash for the third time in 2021. The two drivers avoided contact, but there were questions about whether Verstappen would pick up a penalty or not for pushing his rival wide. Horner believes it was just a racing incident. 

"Two guys running hard, Max has gone in deep they've both gone wide. Would've been unfair to penalise on that. If it was the other way around I'd have told my sporting director to have a moan about it but wouldn't have expected anything from it. A penalty for what? No contact, no advantage made. Hard racing, the stewards made the right decision with the let them race mentality. You want to see the guys going hard at it, you know with Max he's going to race hard. That's two guys fighting hard to for a World Championship," Horner added.