Red Bull team principal Christian Horner has admitted the team made a tactical decision not to give up the lead of the Saudi Arabian Grand Prix despite Max Verstappen facing the threat of a penalty.
Verstappen narrowly lost his lead from pole position to Oscar Piastri on the run to the first corner. The Red Bull driver then cut across the run-off area at the first corner to retake the lead.
The stewards immediately placed the incident under investigation. Horner acknowledged they could have avoided a penalty for Verstappen by relinquishing the lead to Piastri but chose not to as they wanted to avoid running in dirty air and damaging their tyres.
“If we had given the position back… we chose not to at the time, because it would have put us under pressure from the cars behind, plus the benefit of clean air is never to be underestimated,” Horner told the BBC.
Verstappen pulled out a lead of 2.6 seconds over Piastri as the McLaren driver began to struggle with his tyres towards the end of the first stint. Although Piastri lost time at his subsequent pit stop, and Verstappen was instructed to use his engine’s maximum power mode on his in-lap, the McLaren driver regained the lead of the race when the Red Bull driver pitted.
Piastri went on to win the race. Horner said allowing the McLaren driver into the lead to avoid a penalty would not have given Verstappen a better chance to win.
“No, I think overtaking at that circuit, as you saw, is so hard,” he said. “And when you run in the dirty air, to get close, particularly in that awesomely quick first sector. There would have been no chance.”
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Horner gave a different account to the stewards for why they chose to reduce Verstappen’s penalty from the usual 10 seconds to five. He said this was because the decision was “a very marginal call.”
However in their decision the stewards stated “it was [Piastri’s] corner and he was entitled to be given room,” that Verstappen “left the track and gained a lasting advantage that was not given back” and “stayed in front of [Piastri] and sought to build on the advantage.” They only gave one mitigating factor for reducing the severity of Verstappen’s penalty, which was that “this was [a] lap one and turn one incident.”
Verstappen’s performance in Jeddah is an encouraging sign for Red Bull, said Horner. “On that first stint we were able to pull away,” he said. “On the second stint we were 4.8 seconds behind when we left the pit lane and we finished the race 2.6 seconds behind Oscar.
“So we had the pace in that race to win it outright, which has really been the first time, I think, this year that we’ve had the upper hand in pace on race day to the McLarens.”
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