Red Bull boss Christian Horner has questioned McLaren’s “baffling” decision to switch to Softs rather than Mediums for the last stint at Formula 1’s British Grand Prix.
Lando Norris was running in the race lead with a two-second advantage over Lewis Hamilton when Mercedes executed an undercut on McLaren as the track dried up.
McLaren proved to be too indecisive with both timing and compound choice as the side elected to match Hamilton and go with used Softs rather than new Mediums.
That would transpire to be the wrong call as degradation meant Norris was unable to reel in Hamilton and instead had Max Verstappen on Hards demote him to third.
McLaren boss Andrea Stella conceded post-race that the pit wall had made an error in not going to the Mediums, citing how Mercedes influenced its incorrect choice.
Horner has expressed that he was dumbfounded with McLaren’s call as several drivers had struggled to make the red-walled compound last across the opening stint.
Asked about Red Bull’s inspired choice to go with the Hards on Verstappen’s RB20, Horner responded: “A couple of reasons.
“One, we’ve seen that the Soft tyre was rubbish in the first stint with the drivers that had it, and the front opened up very quickly.
“We saw that a little bit on Friday. The Hard tyre was more robust, and we felt was better for us. So we almost didn’t care what the others put on.
“We knew that the hard tyre was better for us. We had a bit of info from Checo at the beginning of the race, and it had seemed to have performed pretty well.
“What was baffling for us was McLaren were the only team that had a new Medium available to them, and they chose not to run it, which would have been an ideal tyre for those conditions.
“The Hard tyre at the end of the race was very strong, particularly in the second sector, the high-speed sector. Max was massively quicker than the cars ahead.”
Verstappen had lambasted Red Bull’s choices at the previous round in Austria, but the Dutchman commended the pit wall’s work to haul him to second at Silverstone.
“We made the right calls,” he beamed. “You know, going from the slicks to the Inters and then also from the Inters back to the slicks, I think it was every time the right lap.
“Then also at the end the call from the team to be on the Hard tyre instead of the Soft was definitely helping me out. That’s why I think we also finished second today.
“It could have been a lot worse but when making the right calls we still got onto the podium and I’m very happy with that because it looked extremely difficult.”
