Here's why Horner believes Verstappen was 'Incredible' in Imola
F1 News
- GPblog.com
Max Verstappen was, once again, the winner in Imola on Sunday. The Dutchman won the Grand Prix after a thrilling final few laps in which Lando Norris was hot on his heels. Red Bull team boss Christian Horner praised the performance of the three-time world champion after the race.
"Everything has to come together and we came here a bit on the back foot on Friday, the team worked really long hours and Sebastian Buemi did a great job in the simulator into the early hours of Saturday morning. We made a step forward in FP3, Max got that incredible pole yesterday, and then obviously we managed to convert it, and Max had to be at the very top of his game, but it was a very hard victory for today." Horner told Sky Sports.
Despite the victory, Horner identified Verstappen's struggles in the second half of the race. According to Horner, this was mainly due to the way the tyres behaved. "I think we perhaps put too much focus on the medium. You can see we built up a big lead on the medium. Then halfway through the hard stint, we started to lose the temperature in the hard tyre, which is a very hard compound. I think McLaren just worked it a bit harder, and they saw the benefit from that in the second half of that stint."
Horner expects another exciting battle in Monaco
Although the tyre temperature caused a lot of difficulties in Imola, Horner does not expect it to be something the team needs to worry about ahead of Monaco. "It will change again next weekend. It's a completely different challenge. Again, it's going to be a really tight fight with both McLaren and Ferrari."