Split strategies work to perfection for Red Bull
Red Bull Racing team principal Christian Horner is adamant today's 5th and 6th places at the Italian GP was the maximum achievable. It was however Daniel Ricciardo who drew the spotlights on him by some impressive overtaking in the second half of the race.
Daniel Ricciardo, 5th: "The strategy helped today, it kept the tyres fresh enough to go those extra few laps at the end. I saw the cars in front of me pit and the pace was still good enough, so seeing that we didn’t have great pace when we were out of position then we thought we would try something different and that’s why we went long, which helped towards the end of the race. I was more comfortable with the prime tyre and was able to do some good moves, which kept me smiling. The start wasn’t ideal, it’s one of the longest runs up to Turn One here from the start line and it’s not a place where you want to have a bad one, but I dropped the clutch and didn’t get the traction, so we will have to look at that, but we kept a cool head and picked our way back through the field. I think fifth, even with a good start, was the best we could do.”
Sebastian Vettel, 6th: “I think that was the most we could do today. On the primes we weren’t able to look after the tyres as well as we wanted to. The target is to get back to the front, at the moment the gap is quite big but we will have to work hard to close it again. We have had some difficulties this year, but they can only make us stronger if we learn from them. In terms of strategy we wanted to get the McLarens so we went aggressive with the early stop, but the tyres started going off at the end and all in all that was what we could do today.”
Christian Horner, Team Principal: “I think fifth and sixth was the absolute optimum today. We picked two different strategies, an aggressive one with Sebastian to undercut the McLaren, which worked and gave him track position but unfortunately made his tyres marginal at the end of the race. With Daniel we took the opposite approach as he was running in clear air. We ran him long in the first stint with a shorter second stint and then his passing moves to come back through the field were truly impressive and obviously with Sebastian struggling with tyre degradation due to the length of the stint, it became inevitable that the two were going to swap positions. But fifth and sixth place, at a circuit dominated by Mercedes-powered cars, is damage limitation achieved.”
Thierry Salvi, Renault: “As expected it was a hard race and we played with the strategy to nurse the tyres and stay as close as possible to the front. Sebastian pitted early to protect position, which left him with very worn tyres at the end, but he nevertheless managed to keep as much pace as possible. Daniel went longer on the first stint and was then able to keep his tyres in good shape until the end of the race. We’ve still got a lot of work to do but overall it’s a reasonable result for the team compared to the qualifying pace yesterday.”
