Christian Horner: We almost won at Silverstone

At Silverstone, Max Verstappen finished just one and a half seconds behind winner Lewis Hamilton. Red Bull Racing boss Christian Horner congratulated the seven-time world champion, but added that Max was also close to the top step of the podium.

Christian Horner: “We have to congratulate Lewis. He is a tough competitor and I know this win means a lot to him. A well-deserved success. In the end we almost won, but it was a strange race. In the beginning we simply didn’t have enough speed on the Medium tyres.

Mercedes ran the race in such a way that from the outside it looked like they had everything under control. Then it started to rain and it looked like McLaren had everything under control. We were behind and at one point I started to worry about Carlos Sainz, who was trying to attack Max. But we changed to intermediate tyres at the right time.

We stayed behind until the others started to deteriorate, but then the situation stabilized. Afterwards the question arose as to which compound to use for the last part of the race. We saw that soft tires were not the most suitable option; at the beginning of the race they were enough for six or seven laps. So we decided to give Max hard tires, which turned out to be the best choice.”