Red Bull boss Christian Horner says that his team can he happy with the outcome of the Hungarian GP, despite Sebastian Vettel throwing away a win and dropping to third.
In the end an inspired strategy call – in which Horner himself played a part – gave Mark Webber the chance to jump Fernando Alonso. And ultimately, thanks to the penalty Vettel suffered, it got him past his own team mate.
According to FIA sources Vettel dropped as much as 110 metres, or 22 car lengths, behind Webber. The rule says you have to stay within 10 car lengths at all times.
“It was a fantastic race for Red Bull, to win our 100th Grand Prix with a one-three finish,” said Horner after the race. “The start was where we were always going to be exposed, and from the dirty side of the grid, Seb made a great start. Mark form the dirty side dropped a place to Fernando, and then the pace car came out at one of those crucial and uncomfortable times where we elected to split the strategy.
“It was a bit of a risk with Mark. We got Seb in right at the at the last moment, we managed to get him into the pit lane, because if he had completed that lap as we saw with [Fernando] in Valencia it would have been a disaster. We managed to get Seb serviced and back out.
“For Mark it was always going to be about building 20 seconds to the Ferraris, to get him ahead. Which was always going to be a tall order. Unfortunately at the restart Sebastian dropped too far behind the 10 car lengths he was supposed to be. I’m not quite sure why, we’ll have to have a chat with him to fully understand that. And then he had a drive through penalty which was fair, because Seb was that far behind Mark.
“And then Mark had to get his head down and achieve that 20 second magic number, which was the number he was chasing, to be able to do a pit stop and get ahead of the Ferraris. He managed to achieve 23, a great pit stop from the boys, and then it was a very comfortable second half of the race for Mark. Sebastian put Fernando under a huge amount of pressure, but at a track like this overtaking was always going to be very, very difficult.”
Horner said he didn’t know why Vettel had dropped so far behind in the safety car queue, although it seems pretty clear that the German had brainfade and just forgot the rule, assuming that he was fully aware of it in the first place.
“I think this kind of thing is obviously covered in the drivers’ briefings, and there was some discussion after China about this. We had a few radio issues with Seb, where it wasn’t fully clear whether he could fully hear us or not, which is why I spoke to him a couple of times in the race.
“It was something we discussed on the pit wall, and we obviously told him to push. I’m not sure how many of those messages he got, because we didn’t get a lot of response from the car, and that’s why I also delivered the message, because again he didn’t understand why he had the penalty, so I used the radio to try and explain to him.
“It was one of those things, which unfortunately for whatever reason, caught him out. What would have been a relative comfortable victory for him today turned into a third place, but a third place on a day when Lewis Hamilton didn’t score any points, and Jenson scored very few, it’s still a great team finish to get a dominate victory and a third place.”
Adam Cooper F1 