Red Bull team boss Christian Horner has revealed the team ordered Max Verstappen to hold back from Lewis Hamilton during the Japanese Grand Prix due to concerns a blistered tyre could puncture.
The Dutchman was left as the only competition to the Mercedes driver for the second straight weekend, following Sebastian Vettel’s early retirement, and was looking to close in after the switch from Supersoft to Soft tyres in the pit-stop.
However, his desire to do so would have to be curbed by the pit wall, with Horner explaining: “We were managing, pretty much from lap 35/36, a widening blister on the inside front left tyre that was getting ever deeper and wider. So we asked Max to maintain a three-second gap so as to not get in the dirty air so as to damage that tyre further.He was still able to easily sit there.”
“So we asked Max to maintain a three-second gap so as to not get in the dirty air so as to damage that tyre further.He was still able to easily sit there.”
In the hottest conditions across the three days and after a lack of long runs due to rain on Friday, the behaviour of the tyres was an unknown going into the race and sure enough, it led to a few surprises.
“It is something that developed,” he claimed of the blistering, when rubber basically boils up on the tyre surface and flies off. “We saw it in the first stint and then because the second stint was 25 percent longer, it reappeared.
“It was a concern because you think back to Sebastian Vettel in Silverstone, it is very easy to pick up a puncture. I don’t know what happened to Lance Stroll but that looked like a puncture on the left front. We were all a bit nervous about that.”
It would be the retirement of Stroll which would allow Verstappen to build a late charge on Lewis in the closing laps but traffic would play a major role as Felipe Massa held the 20-year-old back on the final lap.
“As we got closer to the end of the race after the VSC he said ‘can I have a go?’ and we said ‘as long as you are sensible in the way that you approach it, fine’. Bang, suddenly he was on Lewis’s gearbox,” Horner said.
“It was a bit unlucky that he came across Fernando and Felipe having their own battle because I think another clear lap he certainly would have had a go, whether it would have worked or not I don’t know, but he would have had a crack at making a pass. It always would have been pretty difficult.”
