Red Bull Formula 1 boss Christian Horner has explained how a drop in tyre temperature was behind the pace loss that almost cost Max Verstappen the win at Imola.
Verstappen had overcome balance issues earlier in the weekend to bag pole position and looked on course to dominate as he opened up an eight-second advantage.
However, the Dutchman came under intense pressure in the closing exchanges from a charging Lando Norris, who crossed the line seven-tenths behind the Red Bull.
Horner has revealed that as degradation became a factor on the Hard compound in the second stint, Verstappen lost temperature in the rubber he could not retrieve.
“Well, you know, Stefano’s [Domenicali, F1 CEO] been asking us for weeks to try and make it closer at the end!” Horner quipped.
“No, but in all seriousness, on the first stint on the Medium, it felt like we’d got everything under control.
“Max was able to build up, I think, up to an eight-second gap around the pit stop. And the car was performing very, very well on the Medium.
“And particularly some of the areas we’d been weak on Friday in sector two, you know, he was very much setting the pace.
“After we changed onto the hard tyre, the first half of the stint was absolutely fine.
“But as the gauge wears down on the tyre, temperature becomes crucial, and we just started to lose temperature in the tyre, and with that, the performance started to… We didn’t get as much out of the tyre as Lando, who at one point looked like he was very much under pressure from [Charles] Leclerc, and then he started to come hard at the end of the race.”
Verstappen’s race engineer Gianpiero Lambiase was heard warning Verstappen to avoid breaching track limits, with Horner conceding that also complicated matters.
“I think the other thing that made it particularly stressful in the last stage of the race was that Max had already had three strikes on track limits,” Horner continued.
“So we couldn’t afford, or Max couldn’t afford to make a single mistake on the limits.
“And he delivered brilliantly, so despite significant pressure, he was able to manage it and keep Lando just out of the DRS.”
Horner thinks that sampling the white-walled compound in practice and acquiring knowledge about its behaviour would have mitigated the problem Red Bull endured.
Asked how vulnerable Verstappen would have been with one or two laps more as Norris had stated he needed, Horner answered: “We’d have been vulnerable on fuel.
“So, you know, it worked out. I think probably with hindsight, we would have been better running a hard on Friday, just because we had opted to take two new hard tyres into the race, and maybe it would have been better to have got the information on the tyre.
“But when you look at the turnaround that we had from Friday into Saturday to get the pole, and then to get the victory again today, it’s been a phenomenal performance.
“Also Max has been incredible this weekend, and again, he’s had to work very hard for both the pole position and the victory.”
