Horner finds McLaren choice incomprehensible: 'Didn't take advantage of that'
12:10, 08 Jul 2024
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Nicole MulderManaging Editor
Nicole Mulder is Managing Editor at GPblog and a specialist in Formula 1 and MotoGP. With years of experience and permanent FIA accreditation at Grands Prix worldwide, she delivers reliable coverage and insights based on direct access to drivers and the F1 paddock.
In a race that seemed almost lost, Max Verstappen and Red Bull Racing managed to make a turnaround and even almost clinched victory. This, according to team principal Christian Horner, was due to excellent strategic choices. However, that was not what happened at McLaren according to the Briton.
Horner baffled by choice of McLaren and Norris
Red Bull chose to provide Verstappen with hard tyres in his final stint. Horner explained that choice: "A couple of reasons. One, we'd seen that the soft tyre was rubbish in the first stint with the drivers that had it in the front, it opened up very quickly. We saw that a little bit on Friday, the hard tyre was more robust and we felt was better for us."
He continued: "So we almost didn't care what the others put on. We knew that the hard tyre was better for us. We had a bit of info from Checo at the beginning of the race and it seemed to have performed pretty well."
That McLaren and Lando Norris opted for the softs at the last minute is incomprehensible to Horner. "What was baffling for us was that McLaren was the only team that had a new medium available to them and they chose not to run it. It would have been an ideal tyre for those conditions. The hard tyre at the end of the race was very, very strong. Particularly in the second sector, the high-speed sector. Max was massively quicker than the cars ahead," said the Red Bull team principal.
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