Red Bull boss Christian Horner played down tensions between his drivers after hailing Sergio Perez's "best drive of his career" in Saudi Arabia.
The Mexican converted pole into victory in Jeddah on Sunday, holding off teammate Max Verstappen, who finished second after starting from 15th on the grid.
For Red Bull, it marks just the second time the team has had back-to-back one-two finishes in Formula 1, so unsurprisingly Horner was delighted.
“An amazing weekend." he surmised.
2009 ⏪ Back-to-back 1-2s ⏩ 2023 pic.twitter.com/MaT53sPIm6
— Oracle Red Bull Racing (@redbullracing) March 21, 2023
"Great recovery, obviously, after the difficulties with Max yesterday, so 15th to second and Checo his fifth career victory, fourth victory for us, and probably the best drive of his career I would say."
Asked what impressed him most about Perez's performance, Horner told the F1 Nation podcast...
“I think particularly after the Virtual Safety Car, on the restart he was strong, his pace was strong,” the Briton explained.
“And that was both guys going for it. You could see at times they were a second, 1.2 quicker than the rest of the field and it was a great performance by them.”
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Despite the result, it was a tense race for Red Bull as both drivers reported issues. Perez also aired questions over whether teammate Max Verstappen would attack despite instructions from his side of the garage not to.
Horner though downplayed Sergio's radio messages as "normal", adding: “We talked about [team orders] in a briefing that you’re free to race, but you keep it clean.
“The only debates about managing the pace was when the issue with the driveshaft became prevalent.
“At that point think ‘okay, let’s turn down both cars’. But as soon as it became clear that we couldn’t see anything in the data, we released the cars again."
Perez was also upset after being informed Verstappen had taken the bonus point for the fastest lap on the final lap, calling for a review as to whether different information had been given to him compared to Max.
“Well, I think we came to the conclusion that you know what, it’s the last lap. If he’s going to go, he’s going to go," Horner responded.
“I think he’d already come to that conclusion himself. Both drivers had the info. Checo had the fastest lap at that point, he asked what it was.
“So it was obvious why he was asking. He knew that Max was going to have a crack at it but Checo gave it up after the first couple of turns, he was already a tenth and a half down, and then you saw him back out of it.
“I think that you pass the message on to the driver, of course, the team’s interest is to maximise the points and at whatever point you feel that you may have a reliability issue then you obviously manage that.
“I think inevitably Max said on the radio the point for the fastest lap meant a great deal to him and there was no reason for us not to let either he or Checo have a crack at it.”
