Red Bull likely had a quicker race car than Ferrari during the Azerbaijan Grand Prix, team boss Christian Horner claims.
The Milton Keynes outfit had a tricky start to Sunday’s race with Pierre Gasly starting from the pit-lane and Max Verstappen falling behind Sergio Perez at the start.
But by the final 15 laps, the Dutchman had Sebastian Vettel in his sights and Gasly had close in enough to be ahead of Charles Leclerc when he stopped.
“Our pace compared to Ferrari and Mercedes was strong today,” Horner was quoted by Crash.net. “I think we actually probably had a quicker car than Ferrari.
“When you look at Pierre, in particular, despite on paper having a horrible weekend where he’s been excluded three times and a DNF, actually his pace has been strong.
“If you look at his pace versus Leclerc, in the second half of the stint he was stronger throughout.
“We lost a little bit too much time behind Perez at the beginning which dropped Max off the back of Sebastian [Vettel] and the Mercedes, but at the end of the stint, he was quicker, quite a bit quicker.
“So we went a couple of laps longer to give him a better tyre for the second stint, and then for the second stint, he took ten seconds out of, certainly Sebastian, and closed on the group ahead.”
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It was then their charge was halted, however, as a driveshaft failure caused Gasly to retire, with the resulting Virtual Safety Car halting Verstappen.
“As soon as we got to the VSC, I lost a lot of temperature in the tyres,” Max told Motorsport.com.
“It seems like our car is a maybe a bit more sensitive to that, or we’re just not on top of the tyres. I don’t know – otherwise, we would’ve of course fixed that.
“It was a lot more difficult after that, I was just sliding a lot, and around here if you don’t have the grip, you can’t take the risk into the corner and you lose a lot of lap time.”
Red Bull also instructed Verstappen to stay off the exit kerb at Turn 16, fearing a repeat of Gasly’s problem.
But Horner concluded by reflecting on what he sees as good progress by his team since the start of the season.
“I think we have closed the gap since the beginning of the year,” he stated.
“In Melbourne, we had a strong race, I think Max was pushing Lewis [Hamilton] for the majority of that Grand Prix, Bahrain was a tough race for us but I think actually exposed some things that we’ve managed to improve since then.
“Then China has been a stronger race, and again here even more so at a track that, you know doesn’t historically play to our strengths.
“We’re looking forward to heading back to Europe now and a few circuits coming up that hopefully should suit us,” he concluded.
