Horner admits Red Bull weakness cost Max the podium: 'Losing so much time'
09:40, 07 May
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Max Verstappen was running in P3 for a large part of the Miami Grand Prix. However, in the end, it was Mercedes driver George Russell who took the final podium place. This was all down to Red Bull's subpar tyre degradation.
At the first round of pitsopts, with Andrea Kimi Antonelli stopping for fresh rubber, the opportunity for an undercut arose, something Red Bull needed to react to as Verstappen's tyes had been severely degraded after his fight with the McLarens of Oscar Piastri and Lando Norris.
The RB21's tyres were shot, so Verstappen had to pit before the safety car came out
"Well, we pitted to cover Antonelli. And to be honest, his [Max Verstappen's] tyres were at the end of life. Everybody was hanging out there waiting for the rain or not to be exposed if it did rain. But it got to a point where you're losing so much time on degrading tyres that you've got to pit. So we pitted.
An untimely Virtual Safety Car, triggered by Oliver Bearman's Haas engine going kaput, brought Russell back into play. "But the VSC, George just rolled the dice, they started on the hard tyre, you could never plan for a VSC. That's the problem," added Horner.
Tyre preservation, Red Bull's weakness, McLaren's strength
Nevertheless both McLarens who started on the same tyre as Verstappen and who were overtaking and who fought the Dutchman tooth and nail, did manage to stop under the VSC.
Developing a tyre preservation trait as well-defined as it is on McLaren's MCL39 is something that could taked years even, as McLaren's current path of development started in Austria 2023. How close are Red ull now to that moment of realisation of what to do in terms of developing that aspect on their car? Horner answers.
"I don't think there's a 'eureka' moment, but I think it's very fine because if you look at it the race pace and the degradation we had there [in Jeddah] was better than, or at least the same and marginally better than McLaren."
"Two weeks later they haven't brought a huge amount of different car specification. It's more [a] circuit specific [situation] that has exposed these issues and I think the braking issues that we've had have compounded our issue because then you lose control and everything just runs too hot."
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