Horner saw McLaren coming from a mile away: 'They tried to dummy us'

Christian Horner has weighed in on McLaren's strategy calls during the Japanese Grand Prix and has made his stance on the incident between Max Verstappen and Lando Norris known.

In the end McLaren came out with less than they should have, seeing that they could have gone back to Woking with a 1-2 in their hands, instead it's a 2-3. A missed opportunity given the fact they had two drivers, Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri, against one, Max Verstappen?

"It was difficult because the undercut wasn't so powerful today, They tried to dummy us early in the race with a call for Lando, but we just could see you were gonna come out in traffic," said Horner to Sky Sports.

"So we stuck to our guns and they gave Oscar the first pit stop, and then it was, it was obvious they were gonna hit the next lap with, with Lando, so we just covered that."

Incident Verstappen - Norris, 'perfectly fair'

During the pitstops McLaren did a better job, which gave Norris the opportunity to get close to Verstappen on the pit exit, which resulted in the Briton going off onto the grass.

"It was a little tight on the pit lane exit, but perfectly fair," added Horner on the incident. Following that incident, Horner sheds light on how demanding the race was for Verstappen.

"Thereafter it was a flat out race. There was no tyre saving in that race. It was just flat out to the flag."