Red Bull has an idea for reducing the deficit to McLaren, insists Horner
Red Bull team boss Christian Horner has urged his team to find improvements, but he stated that the Milton Keynes-based outfit has a few ideas how to reduce the gap to McLaren.
Verstappen had a great start, and was clean and away into the first corner. From there he led the opening few laps, but he couldn’t pull away from Norris as he started to overuse his tyres.
However, the McLaren driver managed the overtake the Dutchman into the Tarzan corner, and he pulled away to win the Dutch Grand Prix by a 23-second gap.
Red Bull’s Mexican driver Sergio Perez qualified fifth and finished sixth, but he could leave Zandvoort with positive feelings after having displayed a much more impressive performance all through the weekend than in previous months.
Reflecting on Red Bull’s weekend, team boss Christian Horner stated that the Austro-British outfit needs to understand how to move closer to the field-leading McLaren.
“Firstly, congratulations to McLaren and Lando, their car was in a different league today. We did everything we could and Max converted P2 into a lead at the start, but you could see he couldn’t compete with Lando’s pace. In hindsight the gamble we made with more downforce, following very little Friday running, perhaps wasn’t the best route.
“We need to understand where the deficit is to McLaren and how we can improve performance on our car, we have some idea and will work hard to do that. We are going to have to respond and I am confident we have the strength and depth to do that.
“Max has a 70-point lead in the Drivers’ Championship but we have to keep scoring as a Team and on the days we can’t win you have to finish second. Checo had a solid drive too and looking at his pace he looked strong, particularly in the second half of the race, which is positive.
“So, we have plenty of work to do but we have learnt a lot of lessons this weekend that can be very valuable, we have tried some things on the car that we have good data from to assess. We need to make sure we use that; it is time to digest what happened here and try to bounce back in Monza,” concluded Horner.
