Christian Horner: Max withstood the enormous pressure

After the finish of the race in Imola, Christian Horner did not hold back on praising Max Verstappen, who won despite pressure from Lando Norris.

“The pressure was enormous! – emphasized the head of Red Bull Racing. – Since Max had already exceeded the track limits three times during the race, he could not afford an error of even a millimeter under these conditions. And he did a great job!

In the last laps Lando quickly overtook him, so for us the race was in two halves. We rode the first half of the distance confidently, our lead was seven and a half seconds. But we probably paid too much attention to working with Medium compound rubber. When we switched to hard tires, their temperature gradually started to drop.

I think McLaren worked more effectively with the tires and in the second half of the second segment of the race they felt the benefit of this approach. Overall, it is clear that the speed capabilities of the cars are gradually decreasing as the teams continue to modernize their equipment. Ferrari also improved, as always happens in stable regulatory conditions. There’s nothing unexpected about this. McLaren and Ferrari were very fast on this track.”

At the same time, Horner could not resist criticizing Sergio Perez, who achieved only 8th place today: “Unfortunately, Sergio could not pull himself together after a failed qualification. We developed an alternative tactic for him and he finished eighth. Theoretically, our calculations showed that 7th place was the maximum for him today.

At the same time, we need him to support Max – in the same way that Ferrari drivers and McLaren drivers interact. Sergio was much better at the start of the year and usually drives very confidently, but this weekend was a bit of an exception.”