Horner says Red Bull 'can't be defeatist' about Verstappen's title chances

Talking to Sky Sports, Horner said, "I think that first stint was where we gave away all the time. If you look at when Max came in for the pit stop, 18 seconds behind Oscar, and at the chequered flag, he was 16 seconds behind. So on the hard tyre, we were pretty competitive."

Verstappen steps up his pace to find more speed

About the first stint, Horner admits, "We need to understand, maybe we overcompensated based on the degradation we saw yesterday. For sure, we need to find a little bit more pace."

"Just to emphasize it, he drove another great race today. The pass on Charles, caught the Ferrari and passed Charles, and a fourth-place finish is an important point, but we've still got plenty to do," he praised Verstappen. 

In terms of fighting for the championship, Horner says, "It's race two, we can't be that defeatist, I mean, we're 8 points behind in the driver's championship after 2 races, and there's everything to play for, and if nothing else, last year teaches you, you can start as strong as you like, it's how you finish."

He continued, "We've got great strength and depth in our team. Everybody in the company knows we've got a bit of pace to find. And we've got the tools, we've got the people in order to do that. It's just unpicking it. I think we've got some very good data out of today."

Verstappen also does not back down when it comes to racing. Horner said, "Max is working harder than I've ever seen him. He's more integrated into the engineering group than I've ever seen, and as he said, he seems to be enjoying that aspect so he's not getting super stressed; he's, of course, like any driver impatient for performance, but he's working with the engineers to say okay what about this, what about this, this is what I'm experiencing as a driver, this is where I need the lap time from, and that's the only way you're able to get performance."

This article was written in collaboration with Sandy van Wijngaarden