Horner points to 'unusual' McLaren strength: 'It's quite strange'
F1 News
At one point both McLaren drivers were ahead of Red Bull Racing's Max Verstappen by 16 seconds, however, the Austrian team's principal, Christian Horner, pinpoints a period of the Australian Grand Prix that serves an encouragement for the rest of the season, whilst highliting a strange strength in the papaya team's MCL39.
Red Bull's gamble didn't pay off
Even though the gap was effectively an abyss at one point, with Verstappen trailing both McLaren drivers by 16 seconds, Red Bull's team principal knew a win could still be in the cards for the Austrian team. At one point the rain made a surprise appearance in the third sector and if Red Bull could just survive, then pulling off a win, however unlikely, suddenly became a possibility.
"That's what we were rolling the dice a little for. McLaren was super conservative. Both of their drivers had big moments and it looked like it might just play out. If the rain had veered off then we could have been lucky," said Horner to media present at Albert Park, including GPblog.
However, the rain stayed on for longer than hoped, and McLaren and Lando Norris' efforts resulted in the first win of the year for the papaya team and driver combination. "You've got to congratulate to Lando, he drove a good race today and in difficult conditions for all of the drivers."
McLaren's MCL39's 'unusual' strength
In the final laps of the race, Verstappen managed to keep up with Norris, which enabled him to take advantage of an error by the McLaren driver at Turn 6, moving the Dutchman to within DRS range of the McLaren driver. "We take a lot of encouragement out of that race, the pace we had at the end." On the eve of the relevant sessions of the race weekend, Red Bull was being written off as a potential race winner, with many slotting them behind Ferrari and Mercedes.
But in the end, it was Red Bull who emerged as McLaren's main contender. "The other teams, it was clear what the pecking order was today in terms of pace," added the British team principal before highlighting a 'strange' characteristic of McLaren's car, the MCL39's tyre management.
"I think it's different to every body, yes. And what's quite strange is that they enjoy great warm-up, but also, [a] very low degradation. Usually one comes at the expense of the other, so they've certainly, at this circuit, seem to have mastered that," he concluded.
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