Christian Horner says that the Sebastian Vettel could have challenged Lewis Hamilton in Hungary had he not got caught behind Jenson Button after the first stops.
While Lewis managed to get in front of the McLaren and run his own pace, Vettel was not able to, and made his situation worse when he damaged his front wing. Nevertheless he emerged from the day with a third place and more useful points.
“It was a great race, I think certainly for the fans,” said Horner. “It was a tough race for us in all honesty, because with the damage that Sebastian sustained in trying to go past Jenson after the first stop that obviously compromised his race quite badly. Actually to have salvaged a podium out of it was a very, very strong result.
“Mark’s recovery was excellent, he had a good start, a good first stint, and that really put him back into the race, effectively running the strategy in reverse, with the soft tyre at the end there. To have come away with 27 points and extended our position in both championships going into the summer break after the difficulties we’ve had this weekend is a good result.”
Horner was happy to admit that Hamilton had done a good job to win the race.
“I think Lewis has always been extremely strong round here. If I’m not mistaken that was about his fourth victory here, which is a tremendous score rate. I think the damage was done effectively yesterday in qualifying. I think we could have given Lewis a harder time today if we had cleared Jenson cleanly.
“We didn’t, and he thoroughly deserved the win, was able to control the pace. Once we were stuck behind Jenson it freed him up and in many respects took quite a bit of pressure off. That was a shame for us, good for him, but nonetheless I’m very pleased that we managed to get plenty of points out of today.
“I think when you run in the dirty air it works the tyres a lot harder, and I think the benefit of running in clean air is not to be underestimated. That combined with some front wing damage definitely hurt the balance that Sebastian had today. It was frustrating, because I thought that we could really take the fight to the Mercedes.
“But after that first stop, getting tucked up behind Jenson and then sustaining some damage, effectively released Lewis, and put us back into the realms of fighting with a two-stopping Kimi. As I say, despite the damage Sebastian still managed to have very decent pace, and we could see from the pace that Mark had in clean air that the car was strong today. I think that unfortunately what happened after the stop compromised the race.”
Regarding the loss caused by the wing damage, he said: “It’s difficult to say in all honesty until we look at the analysis afterwards, but up to 0.5 of a second.”
Adam Cooper F1 