Horner saw McLaren 'taking the piss' with radio message to Lando Norris
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Christian Horner has described one of McLaren's radio messages to Lando Norris as "taking the piss". Will Joseph, Norris' race engineer, told him to open up a five second gap by around lap 15. Norris obliged and actually ended up smashing the target, highlighting the performance shift like never before.
On lap 24, Norris had opened up a 19-second lead over Verstappen. The Dutchman was no slouch himself: he had opened up a 12-second lead on Russell. But the relaxed call from McLaren just showcased how much performance Norris had in hand.
How Horner reacted to Norris' radio message
"That was taking the piss," Horner said about McLaren's call. "Lando was a step ahead, particularly on the medium tyre. It didn’t show as much on the hard tyre. But on the medium tyre, he was very, very quick. I thought Piastri actually had a good duration to his stint on that medium tyre. But then on the hard tyre, it was an 18-second gap, and it seemed to be static for a long period of time."
Verstappen may have finished 21 seconds behind race-winner Norris, but Horner certainly saw positives to the Dutchman's pace. "In the rest of the field, I didn’t see a car that was quicker than Max," the Red Bull team boss stressed. "I think on a hard tyre we looked in better shape. But, of course, the gap is way too big by then at a track that, anyway, is very hard to overtake."
Horner on Red Bull improvements
"I think if you roll back the clock to Friday, on Friday night, I think if you'd have said we qualify on the front row, and take second place a significant amount ahead of the rest of the field, I think we would have certainly taken that. But obviously the gap to Lando was significant in the first part of the race, and we've now got the best part of a month to work hard, and try and bring some performance to the car in Austin," Horner said.
This article has been created in collaboration with Nicole Mulder