7 hours ago
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The Red Bull team principal, Christian Horner, has hailed Max Verstappen’s victory at the Japanese Grand prix on Sunday as one of the world champion’s best races and admitted the team had to turn their car “upside down” to put it in a position for the Dutchman to deliver an unexpected win.
Verstappen drove a superb lap to claim pole position at Suzuka, which proved crucial in the race where he led from the front with an exemplary display of control and execution in a car that remains enormously difficult. It was a striking victory to hold off the two McLarens of Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri in second and third, given the pace they have demonstrated in the opening three meetings of the season.
“That’s one of Max’s best weekends,” said Horner. “We literally turned the car upside down, setup wise. He’s worked very hard with the engineering team and finally we were able to give him a car that he could make use of in Q3 on Saturday with the most stunning lap and then to convert that in a hard-fought victory in a straight fight. We leave Japan still with plenty of work to do but huge motivation.”
Red Bull have struggled in the opening rounds, with McLaren having the quickest car and the RB21 proving to be a handful. However Verstappen has returned a second place in Australia, fourth in China and now a win in Japan to stay very much in the title fight.
He trails Norris by one point in the championship, a margin that looked highly unlikely when the British driver sealed a dominant victory at the season-opener in Melbourne.
The Red Bull team principal also revealed the extent to which the team had been trying everything with their car to put it in what is understood to be a very narrow operating window.
“You’re always learning and we’ve been [looking at] ride heights, weight distributions, wing levels, roll bars. Almost every adjustment on the car we’ve been through this weekend,” he said. “It just demonstrates if you keep working hard and you never give up, anything is possible. Max has been stunning and demonstrated once again why I think he’s the best driver on the grid.”
Horner was buoyed up by how his team have dealt with tricky opening races and was confident more is yet to come with 21 meetings still remaining. “This championship is all going to be about maximising your opportunities,” he said.
“So there’s a lot of positives to take and we know if we can unlock some of the potential in this car, it puts us right in the fight. They [McLaren] have the quickest car at the moment and we’re going to need to fight a bit to beat them.”
The McLaren team principal, Andrea Stella, whose pit stop strategy and decision not to make Norris move over for Piastri to attack Verstappen was questioned, acknowledged that the Dutchman had delivered a fine performance but that he still believed their car had the edge.
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“Hats off to Max and Red Bull,” he said. “We know that to beat them we need to operate at the highest standard but also we need to operate consistently and when you might have won, but you don’t win and you are P2-P3, it’s still a robust way of going racing and I think this will pay off at the end of the season.
“Yes, we need to work and this is not only the drivers, this is above all a message for the team. We need to nail all the opportunities that ultimately deliver performance.”
