Christian Horner: “We were glued to the data…”

Red Bull team principal Christian Horner says he can’t believe that Sebastian Vettel was able to bring his car home in second place in Brazil after his gearbox lost most of its oil.

Vettel had problems from as early as the fifth lap, and yet having adjusted his driving was able to nurse it to the flag.

“From as early as lap five we could see the gearbox oil level starting to drop, and the early predictions were it might get to half distance,” said Horner. “We monitored it for a couple of laps and could see a consistent pattern. We informed Sebastian and then started to try and manage the problem by him adjusting his driving style.

“At that point he had a commanding lead. Mark caught him, Sebastian radioed and said I’ll let him through at Turn One, which obviously he did, which then released Mark to get on with his race, whilst we focussed on trying to manage the problem.

“Despite running a gear taller in each corner and trying to reduce the amount of shifts, his pace was still very strong. Then it was a matter of managing the gap to Fernando and then Jenson. There must be zero oil left in that gearbox because it literally went off the scale in those last five laps! We were glued to the data and the screen just to see if it was going to make it to the end.

“It was a very mature and measured drive with strong communication from his engineering team to help him nurse it to the end.”

Horner had no time for the inevitable suggestions that the problem was not genuine, and designed to help Webber end the year with a win.

“Anybody that listened to the conversation between the race engineer or looked in the back of the garage at the amount of activity that was going on over that gearbox – of course there will always be people that have theories, but categorically that gearbox, how on earth it got to the end of the race is beyond me. Thankfully it did.

“If anyone thinks that was concocted in any way, I can absolutely hand on heart guarantee you that based on the blood pressure on the pit wall you can rest assured it was a genuine issue.”