F1 News: Christian Horner "Surprised" By Team Strategy At Bahrain GP
Red Bull team principal Christian Horner was surprised that rival teams didn't opt for soft tires on their cars in the final leg of the Bahrain Grand Prix. He also expressed that the team's dominance over the rest of the F1 grid was "exaggerated" by their decision to opt for soft tires in the second stint of the race.
Key Takeaways:
- Red Bull team principal Christian Horner expressed surprise that rival teams did not choose soft tires in the final part of the Bahrain Grand Prix, suggesting their dominance was "exaggerated" by their tire strategy.
- Red Bull started the 2024 season strongly with a 1-2 finish, led by Max Verstappen from the beginning, and Sergio Perez securing second place after recovering from fifth.
- Despite Red Bull's impressive start, Horner believes it's too early to predict season dominance, emphasizing that the field will likely converge as the season progresses, and the other teams might adapt to different conditions.
Red Bull started the 2024 season with quite a bang for itself by securing a 1-2 finish in Bahrain, with Max Verstappen starting at the front and maintaining the position until the chequered flag.
Meanwhile, Sergio Perez recovering from fifth place, secured second ahead of the two Ferraris. Despite claims made by rival teams that their cars have been redesigned for better performance over the winter break, the strong start by Red Bull has raised the possibility of its continued dominance in F1, reminiscent of their nearly invincible 2023 campaign.
However, when examining Red Bull's tire strategy in the Bahrain Grand Prix, it executed a move that none of the other nine teams adopted. In the last segment of the race, the Milton Keynes outfit stood out as the sole team choosing soft tires in contrast to all other teams opting for hard tires.
While the decision to go for the soft option did prove fruitful, Horner suggests that the advantage the soft tires provided was exaggerated. He told the media:
“Yeah but look, everything’s relative, isn’t it? I think Checo came from P5, Max was obviously managing the race as many drivers are managing different tires at different times.
“It’s not a question of how much you win, it’s a question about winning, and we won today, Max dominated the race, he was in a class of his own.
“Checo drove an outstanding race as well, coming through the field from fifth on the grid, fastest lap, I think the back end of the race was exaggerated by the offset of tires that we carried in, I’m surprised others didn’t carry softs into the race when it was clearly, in these conditions, the better tire to have.”
In addition, the Red Bull team principal thinks it would be too soon to conclude that Red Bull would dominate the 2024 season since the field would converge as the season progresses. He said:
“Again, I’ve been in this business too long to draw too many conclusions from a single race.
“It’s a fantastic start, we’ll enjoy this moment, maximum points score.
“But it’s a long season, many different venues, different challenges, different conditions. And what we saw in the testing is that things are closer.
“Now we got it right this weekend, we took the right cars into the race, we executed a perfect race with both cars and we got a great finish. But I think that it will converge.”