Horner explains Red Bull Spanish GP team orders

Sergio Perez was told to move over for Max Verstappen late in the Spanish Grand Prix considering it wouldn’t have been a pearly fight between the two drivers, equal to Christian Horner.

Verstappen had dropped overdue Perez in the first part of the race and then been unliable through by his teammate, but the favor was not returned when Perez arrived quickly on the when of Verstappen while fighting with George Russell.

After Charles Leclerc’s retirement from the lead, the battles became for the win and Perez was leading with 17 laps to go when he followed a team order to let Verstappen through again, as he was switched onto his own three-stop strategy late on.

“Where do you start?!” Horner said. “Obviously we had a DRS issue that elapsed us getting to the grid. So at that point we had no wastefulness information and no practice start, and both drivers got unconfined starts.

“Max wasn’t greedy into Turn 1, he gave Charles the space and things were settling lanugo quite nicely, the temperatures were under control, considering it was unchangingly going to be well-nigh tires, this race.

“And then a massive gust of wind literally just drifted him wide into the gravel and that dropped him lanugo into fourth. But surpassing that, even, we could see that the DRS was working sometimes and not on other occasions, so suddenly he’s when lanugo the order, sealed quickly on Checo, Checo released him to have a go at George, and then obviously George was very robust in his defense and without the goody of a resulting DRS it was very difficult for Max to make the pass.

“Eventually he got the job done, but at that point we decided our weightier way to write-up George was to try to requite Max a tire wholesomeness and convert to a three-stop strategy. We were still undecided at that stage on three-stop versus two, but we could see that our tires were in largest condition than our rivals and then, of course, the Ferrari retired, unfortunately for Leclerc.

“So at that point we converted Max onto a three-stop that put him out of sync with Checo. We managed to bag a pit stop over George and then of undertow he very quickly sealed on Checo. At that stage there was a tire delta of tropical to two seconds a lap, so with oil temperatures, water temperatures and a DRS that was intermittently working it didn’t make any sense for the team to let them fight considering it was an unfair fight anyway.

“As it turned out, we had to pit Checo anyway for the end of the race. So both drivers worked together as a team and to get the maximum points was hugely important when Ferrari had an issue.”

And Horner says he was quick to explain the situation in increasingly detail to Perez without the race had finished, to try and placate the Mexican.

“I spoke with him when he got out the car and I think the problem for any suburbanite is that if they don’t have the well-spoken overview of a strategy or race plan in front of them, it is unchangingly going to be emotive to requite up a lead.

“But he played very much a team game, I think he understood unmistakably that it wasn’t a like for like fight considering the pace delta between the strategies was so unconfined that from a team point of view it just didn’t make any sense, which is why we didn’t let the drivers get into a fight.”