Red Bull team boss Christian Horner believes it allowed a “straightforward” victory to slip through its grasp at the Mexican Grand Prix.
Max Verstappen was set to start from pole position but a post-session penalty for ignoring yellow flags relegated him to fourth on the grid.
Verstappen dropped to eighth after a first-lap tangle with Lewis Hamilton and in passing Valtteri Bottas through the Foro Sol stadium section he sustained a right-rear puncture.
That dropped Verstappen to the rear of the field, from where he recovered to sixth, running a 66-lap stint on Hard tyres.
“It’s frustrating,” said Horner, who commented that Red Bull had the fastest car in race trim.
“Even with a penalty after pole, he [Verstappen] was racing hard with Lewis, they both got wide at Turn 2 and he had to take avoiding action so lost some ground but even then it was still game on.
“It was really the puncture with Valtteri that screwed his race.
“Having to do a whole lap with a puncture, you could see his pace – I think when he came out he was two seconds a lap quicker than the leaders at that early stage.
“So I think it would have been quite a straightforward race for him.”
Horner added that “even starting on the pole with the speed of the Ferraris it would have been very hard to be first into the first corner.
“So I think there was a feeling going into the race that ‘Do you know what? Being on the second row isn’t a bad thing here if you can pick up the tow’.
“We saw Daniel [Ricciardo] last year go from first to third by the time he got to the first corner.
“So it was frustrating to lose the pole position but it wasn’t the end of the world, we still had a car good enough to win the race and I think the thing that really screwed the race for us was ultimately the puncture.”
