Ted Kravitz: Horner was telling Verstappen - “You’re still our man”
Perez fended Verstappen off to claim his second victory of F1 2023 - his fifth for the team overall.
While Perez was fortunate to take the lead in the first place, benefitting from the Safety Car caused by Nyck de Vries, the Mexican’s race pace and tyre preservation was ultimately superior to Verstappen’s.
Heading into the Miami Grand Prix, Perez is just six points behind Verstappen and could lead the championship with another victory this weekend.
Speaking after Sunday’s race in Baku, Kravitz put forward an interesting theory to Horner’s post-race exchange with Red Bull’s star driver.
“I thought the Perez radio message was interesting, when he said: ‘Look, guys, we are still in the fight’.
“It sounded like Perez was talking to his engineer and mechanics only, and not the rest of the team.
“He was saying: ‘We are still in the fight, we can’t have issues like we did in Melbourne and we can still get this championship. But then you’ve got Horner on the pit wall, with what sounded like reassuring radio messages to Max, saying: ‘Never mind, Checo got lucky with the Safety Car, but it’s a long, long season’.
“That, to my ears and to anyone reasonable, sounds like Horner saying to Max: ‘Look, don’t worry, you’re still our man for the championship’. Checo is thinking: ‘Hang on, I’ll fight tooth and nail to be the man to fight for the championship’.”
Verstappen ultimately lost the lead because he stopped before the Safety Car was deployed.
When the Dutchman came into the pit lane, de Vries had stopped out on track so a Safety Car or VSC was imminent.
Kravitz described the decision to bring Verstappen in at that time as an “odd call”.
“I’m going to call it the odd call,” he said. “They could have, if there was a button on the de-rig, say ‘stay out! Stay out!’
“They didn’t know. It was a very close thing. I reckon they probably would have had less than 10 seconds to tell Max to stay out.
“The decision time would have been six seconds, something like that. Then, they can’t guarantee that Verstappen wouldn’t be like ‘woah I’m already in the pitlane!’
“But, had that happened, Verstappen would have won this grand prix. Perez had the pace today. That’s the crucial thing. Max and Sergio were so tightly matched today.
“Even when Perez went out, Max couldn’t catch him. So arguably - had he stayed out and they didn’t stack - maybe Perez would have passed him in the pits.”
