Red Bull Formula 1 boss Christian Horner says that the Belgian GP was a “strange” and “bizarre” race – and that no one could have predicted either the pace of Mercedes on Sunday or that anyone could run a one-stop strategy successfully.
George Russell used a one-stop to win the race on the road, although disqualification handed the victory to his team mate Lewis Hamilton.
Meanwhile after taking a PU change grid penalty Max Verstappen could only climb from 11th to fifth place by the flag.
“I don’t think anybody had a crystal ball that a one-stop was going to be the strategy that worked out,” said Horner. “We were running just behind George on the same tyre, having pitted on the same lap.”
“And with a set of mediums, we felt actually, that’s not a bad option to have, because the degradation was lower than we thought. And I don’t think George set off in that race expecting to do a one-stop.
“But congrats to him and Mercedes for making it work, because I don’t think even they thought it was potentially going to work at one point.
“So it was a strange race, because all the all the data from Friday pointed towards graining, high deg, the new surface here. And it was actually, whether it due to the temperature or whatever it was actually the complete inverse, where a one-stop won the race. So I don’t think anybody could have envisaged that.
“But I thought Max did a did a good job, going from 11th to fifth, finishing ahead of his nearest championship rival, who started fourth. And only seven seconds from the leader. In what is now a very, very tight grid, I thought that was the optimum, extending his lead in the drivers’.”
Horner admitted that Red Bull hadn’t anticipated that Mercedes would be so competitive in the race, the Brackley team having abandoned a floor update that produced too much bouncing when trialled on Friday.
“It was bizarre,” he said. “Mercedes looked out of it on Friday, and then their race pace looked very good. The big unknown is the tyres. Different conditions, different track surface, new asphalt.
“I don’t think anybody’s race plot are simulations would have predicted that going into the race.
“But to start 11th, finish fifth, seven seconds from the leader – and we never really got to run in clean air, we were always in dirty air, dirty air, dirty air – had we started on the pole, potentially, he could have won it.
“But we’ve got that engine penalty in the bank now, which puts us in a better place for after the break.”
