Horner: 'Mercedes may have had faster car than Red Bull today'

“I think that it’s just time in the seat," said Horner, who then briefly pointed out to Sky Sports that Perez did manage to excel a day earlier on Saturday. "He did a good job yesterday. Today was unfortunately a messier race for him." The British chief calls it frustrating that his 'second' driver failed to score any points, as he was doing well to find his feet during the afternoon. "I'm sure he'll have much better weekends ahead."

The start of the race still went well, but during the safety car a small drama unfolded for the Mexican veteran. "Obviously the mistake behind the Safety Car early on, the 10-second penalty and then unfortunately the mistake behind the Ferraris at the restart was a shame because he would have scored, he could well have been on the podium today as well."

Hamilton particularly fast

In the team review, Horner further reveals that the W12 was perhaps more competitive than the RB16B at Imola. "Lewis was still very quick today which could be seen particularly towards the end of the race when they seemed to have very low tyre degradation. I think they maybe had a quicker car than us today but it’s great to get that first victory of the season under our belts. Now we need to build on this momentum for the remainder of the season and we are going to have to go some way to keep Mercedes under pressure," he concluded.