Red Bull team boss Christian Horner voiced some rare praise in the direction of Renault after the strong performance at the Mexican Grand Prix.
Daniel Ricciardo and Max Verstappen would achieve Red Bull's first front-row lockout of the V6 hybrid era in qualifying with the latter going on to take a commanding victory on Sunday for the second straight year.
“Credit where credit’s due, Renault have provided us with an engine this weekend in these conditions that is competitive with our opponents,” Horner admitted.
“That’s enabled us to go head-to-head, lock out the front row of the grid and win the Grand Prix in a dominant fashion. Theoretically, we should have had a one-two here [before Ricciardo's retirement].
“The altitude of this circuit does constrain some of our rivals and it puts Renault into a window where they are competitive," he added.
“Which is why we put an awful lot of focus into this race in taking the penalties [at the Russian GP] to get another B-Spec into the pool, to have for this weekend.”
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Though Ferrari and Mercedes did still have a slight advantage down the straights, it was the downforce of the RB14 which negated that with Ricciardo and Verstappen comfortably faster in the second and third sectors.
That also brought an added advantage on a weekend where Pirelli's three compounds proved particularly difficult to manage.
“It was really nice to have this feeling again, and the race was so easy. We didn’t have any problems with the tyres. The others complained,” Red Bull advisor Helmut Marko said.
“One stop would have worked with Ricciardo, he could hold Vettel behind him easily, and the two-stop for Max was just for safety, we had the tyres available, so we put them on, in case a Safety Car came and Ferrari put Hypers on at the end.”
“The altitude meant we didn’t have a power deficit and it shows how good our chassis is.”
