Red Bull Racing boss Christian Horner says that Max Verstappen has been showing why he is a World Champion in the close fight with Lando Norris and McLaren in recent races.
Norris took pole for the Spanish GP but was passed by Verstappen at the start, with both men also initially losing out to George Russell.
McLaren put Norris on an offset strategy with longer stints, and while he got close to Verstappen by the flag, he came up just short.
Norris himself admitted that he should have won the race, and Horner acknowledged that had Norris made a better start and not dropped to a third from pole the race might have turned out differently.
“I think if Lando would have had track position, it would have been difficult to beat him today,” said Horner.
“It was so close between the two of them who were then circa 18 seconds ahead of the rest of the field. So I would say that Lando has emerged from the pack as the most consistent challenger.”
He added: “I think the McLaren looked fast, certainly at the end of the stints, which is something that we’ve seen at a couple of races now.
“So their degradation seems to be good, but that’s a little bit offset by the strategy and the overlap in the tyre life.
“We had enough today to get the job done. And it was a seventh victory out of 10 races. Four of them have been very hard.
“But again, the team working at a level where we’re still delivering the pit stops at 1.7 seconds, and strategy, etc. But Max, again, demonstrated why he’s the World Champion. At the key, key moments, he delivers.”
Horner admitted that this year has been much tougher for Verstappen and his team than 2023.
“He’s fantastic under pressure,” said Horner. “He’s always been fantastic. And last year was a unicorn year, now is a more normal year where it’s not normal to win all the races all the time, and we’re having to fight very, very hard for them.
“Max is making the key difference. But we know where we need to improve. We’re getting a better understanding of where our strengths and weaknesses are, and we’re doing enough at the moment to keep growing that championship lead.”
Regarding how the Spanish GP panned out Horner said that getting ahead of Norris at the start was crucial, although both men were passed by Russell.
“I think today there were a few decisive moments,” he said when asked by this writer about the race. “Obviously we lost the pole by two-hundredths yesterday, and we knew it was going to be very tight with Lando. So the start was crucial.
“We took the start on the on the scrub tyre, rather than the new tyre, because we wanted to have the new tyre, because we thought we might need it for an undercut later in the race. Max had a good start, managed to get alongside Lando.
“Then fairly robust racing, where he’s on the grass on the way down to Turn 1, which then allowed George to pick out his braking point and go around the outside. So job one was passing Lando into Turn 1.”
Horner stressed that getting past Russell allowed Verstappen to control the race and run his own strategy.
“And then it was a race that was always going to be dominated about tyre wear, and so being quick to pass George was crucial,” he noted.
“And he pushed hard on that first lap or two to get the pass on George, as soon as DRS opened, and then immediately got into managing the tyres, and was able to build out a gap reasonably comfortably in that in that first stint.
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“At that point we decided to go for an optimum race in terms of the strategy and our stop laps, and McLaren obviously extended, so they go off an optimum race, so they have an offset.
“So you look at the gap and you think, oh, nine seconds looks pretty decent. But with the tyre offset of six laps I think it was on a medium, and then three or four on the soft, those gaps come back at you pretty quickly. So today was all about not making any mistakes.
“And Max drove a perfect race. I think the strategy was spot-on, well executed pit stops. And so it’s all those small details. We knew that Lando would come back towards us at the end of the race, but we felt we should have just enough in hand, which is the way it played out.”
Horner admitted that it was a far from easy victory for Verstappen: “You could see that to the guys were going flat out, and because we get the GPS data, as all the teams do of the other cars, we could see Lando wasn’t saving anything in Turn 3 and 9, and the last two turns.
“So then the information is given to Max to say you can start pushing. And he’s got such capacity in his driving, he knows the stint length, he knows what he needs to take out of the tyres. And that’s where he really is a masterclass.”
Adam Cooper F1 