Horner saw chance of win when "we saw Leclerc go onto the hard tyre"
F1 News
In terms of pure pace, Red Bull Racing and Ferrari are closely matched. But the Italian team continue to make mistakes on the strategy. After the race Red Bull team boss Christian Horner didn't comment on Ferrari but highlighted how good his own team are at strategy.
Strategy changes
It all went wrong for Charles Leclerc when Ferrari decided to place Leclerc on the hard tyres. In a conversation with Sky Sports, Horner claimed that Red Bull were due to start the race on the hard tyres but made a last-minute change to react to the weather.
"I can only focus on our performance and we did a great job today. We switched our strategy on the grid. Both our drivers felt they struggled to generate heat on the soft tyre. We were due to the start the race on the hard tyre to deal with the ambient conditions. The soft tyre went further than we thought. At that point, we committed to a two-stop," Horner said.
"The key moment for us was when we saw Leclerc go onto the hard tyre, we thought we've really got a chance now. We have a great strategy team here and in Milton Keynes. The pit stops today were dynamite."
Championship
Max Verstappen now has an 80-point lead in the World Championship. There are still nine races to go, but he can afford three DNFs and still be at the top of the leaderboard. Horner isn't getting carried away and he knows things can change suddenly.
"It's a healthy lead but a lot of racing to go. Things can go wrong. We had reliability issues today, could've been a DNF. If we had the failure yesterday, 12km later it would've been on the way to the grid. Ferrari are quick, Mercedes are coming back at us," he added.