Horner reveals: 'Yes, Verstappen could have been even faster in 23'

With 19 wins in the 2023 season, Max Verstappen further sharpened his own record of most wins in an F1 year. It was not just the immense number of Grands Prix won that impressed, but certainly the way Verstappen took them. It sometimes made competitors suspect that the three-time world champion did not even have to go flat out to be victorious.

Fact or fiction? Team boss Christian Horner was asked by Sky Sports how often Verstappen was cruising during the Grands Prix he won? "There's always an element of managing because the tires are pretty sensitive, so not overstressing the car," Horner opined.

Victory for Verstappen in Bahrain could have been bigger

"The engines have got to do so many races and reliability being a key factor. Certainly at the beginning of the year, I think that first race in Bahrain, we could have been another 20 seconds up the road if he'd had been pushing. But that concertinas at different points in the year and we basically stopped developing the car mid-year because, with the wind tunnel restrictions that we've had, we had to pick and choose where to deploy our resources. So you saw in the second half of the year the field ebbing ever closer."

Nevertheless, Red Bull Racing had to admit defeat only in Singapore. Then Ferrari was the best. The rest of the second half of the season - despite all the points mentioned by Horner - Verstappen was the strongest each time.