Christian Horner is happy with the rebound in F1 Saudi Arabian GP after the disappointment in Bahrain GP as Max Verstappen’s moment surfaces.
Despite the good showing in F1 Bahrain GP, Red Bull returned empty handed after double retirement for Verstappen and Sergio Perez due to fuel system issue. The apparent problem was fixed before Saudi Arabian GP with the team bouncing back well.
It wasn’t an easy task as Verstappen had to fend off Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc to win, while early leader Perez lost out in an unfortunate safety car situation. He had to be content with fourth place behind Carlos Sainz, with the Italian manufacturer securing double podium.
Post-race, Horner was naturally pleased with how things panned out after Bahrain, as they opened their points tally. “It was a great to rebound after the disappointment of Bahrain, the team have worked very, very hard during the past week to understand and address hopefully the issues that we had,” he said to written media.
“And what a great race. I mean, it was a very strategic race for Max, not taking too much out of the tyres to make sure he had enough to attack at the end of the Grand Prix and then some great racing between him and Charles. And thankfully, he just had enough to hang on, you know, right at the end.
“Sergio Perez had that race under control, It was desperately disappointing for Sergio, because you know, what a incredible lap yesterday to get that pole, he then converted that into the lead,” summed up Horner, who reckons the new rules has done well so far in allowing some good fights amid different interpretations too.
“You can see there’s a big variance of interpretations of the rules,” said Horner. “And I think that we’ve come up with a creative solution. And I think it gives us good potential for the season ahead. So to get this early victory, it’s fantastic.
“The really encouraging thing about these regulations is that in the last two races, we’ve seen Charles and Max pass each other about 10 times, which we haven’t seen in previous seasons. It’s been great racing, another fantastic race there between the two teams.
“I think that of a sample of two, you’d have to say it’s a big tick in the box for the ability to follow closely and race wheel to wheel. It’s been outstanding,” summed up Horner. With days gone, a video surfaced online which showed how Verstappen managed to throw off visor from Leclerc which stuck on the antenna in front of his cockpit.
It is not clear which lap it happened but it seemingly after the safety car re-start as Verstappen’s engineer came up on the radio to alert of DRS being enabled. The onboard shared shows the Dutchman trying to remove it especially when on straights.
Here’s F1 posting the video: https://twitter.com/F1/status/1508542993678180358?s=20&t=XBNxot3DGGDOzG_UC_dwBQ
F1 TV subscribers can watch Verstappen’s race onboard: https://f1tv.formula1.com/page/4334/formula-1-stc-saudi-arabian-grand-prix-2022
Here’s the visor cam view of the battle: https://twitter.com/F1/status/1509179280902836224?s=20&t=f3tXaUSuMG4qS-Bim7dYdg
Here’s Christian Horner and co on safety car re-start, place given
Here’s how Max Verstappen and Charles Leclerc described Saudi battle
