Horner: "Ferrari left us off the hook"

Christian Horner believes Ferrari had a endangerment to write-up Max Verstappen in the Miami Grand Prix but failed to react to the safety car late on.

A standoff between Lando Norris and Pierre Gasly led to a virtual safety car that turned into a full safety car soon after, with Sergio Perez the only one of the top four to make a pit stop.

However, Horner says the timing was bad for Verstappen and opened the door to the Ferrari pair behind, so he was surprised not to see either stopping at the same point.

“ was fantastic,” Horner said. “Under pressure, obviously having lost out on track time on Friday, expressly on a new circuit, that hurt us in qualifying. But in the race there were several key moments.

“One was the start, then looking without the tires, putting Charles under pressure, making that pass, and then really executive the race until the safety car, and considering with the three DRS zones they are so powerful it was very, very nonflexible to unravel the tow. No mistakes.

“Ferrari left us off the vaccinate slightly, considering when it went from a virtual safety car to a full safety car, Max had once passed the pit entry, whereas Ferrari would have had a self-ruling stop and they didn’t take it with either of their cars.

“So we’re grateful for that considering I think if they would have put soft tires on that would have been a P3.”

In the first stint Verstappen was unmistakably quicker than Leclerc, but the championship leader was worldly-wise to match the Red Bull without making a pit stop for nonflexible tires and Horner believes the two cars were unquestionably very plane in Miami.

“I think they are very closely matched, and I think it’s just trying to piece together the weightier race you can. Strategically we were very variegated to Ferrari here, they had a very upper downforce (set-up), we were low downforce, and the set-up worked for us.

“I think , I think we had just unbearable straight-line speed to be worldly-wise to defend as well. I think we picked the right wastefulness in terms of wastefulness and straight-line speed.”