Christian Horner: “I don’t think you can discount anybody”

Christian Horner says that Red Bull feared that Kimi Raikkonen would be able to hang onto the lead in Germany by not making a third pit stop – an alternative outcome that Kimi himself pondered after the race.

In the end the Finn did come in for an 11-lap final stint on soft tyres, and ultimately had to settle for second place behind Sebastian Vettel.

“It was a tough call in some respects and not in others,” he said of Vettel’s final pit stop, made in response to Romain Grosjean coming in. “Obviously the pace car came out when a Marussia started a life of its own, and that was at a very awkward point in the race, because it was still potentially too far to go on a set of the harder tyres. So we elected to fit a set of scrubbed tyres to Sebastian’s car, leaving one new set available for the last stint.

“So we intended to stop, and were thinking that the Lotuses might actually try to brave it out to the end. Once Grosjean stopped then it made perfect sense for us to cover Grosjean. The risk with that was conceding the lead to Kimi if he didn’t need to stop, and he was looking in pretty good shape at that stage.

“We made the stop, covered Grosjean, we then focussed on keeping the gap to Kimi to less than a pit stop obviously, so that when he did stop for the soft tyres Sebastian had just enough to cover him. We saw that the Lotus was very quick on the soft tyre at the beginning of the race, but Sebastian kept just enough up his sleeve to fend him off over the last few laps.”

Horner stressed that the victory meant a lot to Vettel.

“For him it’s obviously massively special to win your home race, and he’s for sure extremely proud of what he’s achieved today. He’s always taken the bigger picture. We discussed it before the race and said let’s go for the best that we can, and if that’s second today, that’s second. There’s just as many points attached to this race as the other 18, and it’s approaching one at a time.

“But there was a pretty big grin on his face, and he was pretty excited to cross the line. To win it the way he did, it was absolutely text book from him today, he did not put a wheel wrong, pushed when he needed to, and he was on it every single lap. I think he’s pretty chuffed to have won his home race.

“It was a good race today, it was an exciting race, plenty going on. For us it made up in some way for the disappointment of Silverstone as well, having got so close to winning the British GP. To address that a week later in Sebastian’s home race was a great result.”

Horner admitted that he was surprised to see Mercedes struggle so much on race day.

“Yes, because they had looked strong on Friday, so maybe perhaps the temperature today hurt them more than others. Certainly the Lotuses were very quick today. We were surprised that Fernando stopped so early on the hard tyre, so I don’t know what his issue was, but it was definitely clear early on that initially Grosjean was going to be the major factor after his long stint on the first set of soft tyres, and then obviously Kimi came into play later on in the race as well. They were very strong today, but what happened to Mercedes, I’m not quite sure.”

Despite Vettel’s comfortable lead Horner says that the title fight is still wide open.

“I think it’s very much a four-way battle, I don’t think you can discount anybody. We’re effectively at the half way point of the year, there’s still an awful long way to go, and anything can change. But to have won four Grands Prix in the first half of the year is satisfying, but it doesn’t guarantee anything. We see weekend to weekend different teams have different levels of competitiveness. I’m sure that will continue during the next few events.”